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A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you.
John Steinbeck
- Life
- 1902-1968
- Occupations
- writer, screenwriter, war correspondent
- Notable works
- Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
John Steinbeck
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?
John Steinbeck
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
John Steinbeck
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
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
John Steinbeck
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John Steinbeck
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John Steinbeck
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.
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
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
John Steinbeck
The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.
John Steinbeck
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 townlets wither a time and die.
John Steinbeck
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John Steinbeck
The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
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
Time is the only critic without ambition.
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
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
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
John Steinbeck
You got a god. Don't make no difference if you don't know what he looks like.
John Steinbeck