02UndatedJust like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
03UndatedHard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
04UndatedIt was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessaryJohn Steinbeck / quote ↗
05UndatedAll this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontentJohn Steinbeck / quote ↗
06UndatedA kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
07UndatedShe seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
09UndatedI got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that'swhy.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
10UndatedI ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a God damn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin' around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
12UndatedStrange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
15UndatedLanser had been in Belgium and France twenty years before and he tried not to think what he knew—that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
16UndatedThere are several ways to wear a hat or a cap. A man may express himself in the pitch or tilt of a hat, but not with a helmet. It won't go on any other way. It sits level on the head, low over eyes and ears, low on the back of the neck. With your helmet on you are a mushroom in a bed of mushrooms.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
17UndatedPeople who try to tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. . . . "It's the glass," says one man, "the sound in the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle." ... An old woman was selling little miserable sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of burning buildings made it like day. . . . And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in—a squeaky voice. "Lavender!" she said. "Buy Lavender for luck."The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike. The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
18UndatedBut the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
20UndatedIn business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind--but he must get there first.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
22UndatedSometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breathed in peacefulness. Since both were shy they never talked about themselves. Neither knew about the other at all.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
23UndatedHe hated old women. They frightened him. There was a smell about them that gave him the willies. They were fierce and they had no price. They never gave a damn about making a scene. They got what they wanted. Louie's grandmother had been a tyrant. She had got whatever she wanted by being fierce.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
24UndatedAnd the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
