The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the town lets wither a time and die
John Steinbeck
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
John Steinbeck
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate
John Steinbeck
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
John Steinbeck
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
John Steinbeck
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
John Steinbeck