John Steinbeck Wrath Quotations

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.

Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't no good, 'cause his little piece of a soul wasn't no good 'less it was with the rest, an' was whole.

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.

If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.

And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry n’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.