Quotations

"Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it. Just 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."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"Man, he lives in the jerks-- baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk-- gets a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on-- changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"And her joy was nearly like sorrow."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"Yes, you should talk, he said. Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth."

— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, published, April 14, 1939

"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."

— John Steinbeck, American author, born 1902

"The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful."

— David Steindl-Rast, Catholic Benedictine monk, born 1926

"Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you."

— David Steindl-Rast, Catholic Benedictine monk, born July 12, 1926

"If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person's good qualities, I gather in that force."

— Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher, died March 30, 1925