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.

More from John Steinbeck

• 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.
• Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
• How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?
• I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
• 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.
• I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.