John Steinbeck

"Woman and women is two different things," said Suzy. "Guy knows all about women, he don't know nothing about a woman."

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?

I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.

You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns.

I have wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.

He told me how a man, a real man, had no right to let sorrow destroy him. He told me again and again how I must believe that time would take care of it. He said it so often that I knew he was losing.

There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go.

And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing — maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed — because Thou mayest.

With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

They were not pure, but they had a potential of purity, like a soiled white shirt.

It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

... we think of strangers as stronger and better than we are.