Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species? Can it be that we are afraid of what we may find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for if we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find ourselves true images of his kingdom, our eves the nebulae, and universes in our cells.
John SteinbeckI have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
John SteinbeckTags: awesome
But I have a 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.
John SteinbeckLiterature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
--speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962
Tags: writing literature
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
John SteinbeckTags: silence heaviness-of-time
Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men.
John SteinbeckTags: greatness courage cowardice great-men
All of them had a restlessness in common.
John SteinbeckTags: comradery restlessness restless
He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.
John SteinbeckTags: courage virtue forbearance
I know it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world.
John SteinbeckBeans are a warm cloak against economic cold.
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