And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.
JOHN STEINBECKYour audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
More John Steinbeck Quotes
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Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
JOHN STEINBECK -
I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.
JOHN STEINBECK -
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
JOHN STEINBECK -
I believe that love cannot be bought except with love.
JOHN STEINBECK -
If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens – The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
JOHN STEINBECK -
If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
JOHN STEINBECK -
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
JOHN STEINBECK -
With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
JOHN STEINBECK -
An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion.
JOHN STEINBECK -
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.
JOHN STEINBECK -
And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
JOHN STEINBECK -
This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.
JOHN STEINBECK -
All great and precious things are lonely.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.
JOHN STEINBECK -
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
JOHN STEINBECK -
It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
JOHN STEINBECK -
To be alive at all is to have scars.
JOHN STEINBECK -
If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.
JOHN STEINBECK -
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
JOHN STEINBECK -
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
JOHN STEINBECK -
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.
JOHN STEINBECK