John Steinbeck quotes

“I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.”

— 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

“Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.”

— John Steinbeck

“These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.”

— John Steinbeck

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

— John Steinbeck

“So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.”

— John Steinbeck

“Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.”

— John Steinbeck

“The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

— John Steinbeck

“Time is the only critic without ambition.”

— John Steinbeck

“Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.”

— John Steinbeck

“I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?”

— John Steinbeck

“Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.”

— John Steinbeck