The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
Accepting Nobel Prize, 1962
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More from John Steinbeck
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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.
Letter to his literary agent, found on his desk after his death in 1968
You got a god. Don’t make no difference if you don’t know what he looks like.
Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment — social, political, or ethical — can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.
America and Americans (1966)