John Steinbeck Quotations | Page 4

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

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Only mediocrity escapes criticism.

People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.