John Steinbeck Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I guess there are never enough books.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Enough

  John Steinbeck (2001). “The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights”, p.304, Penguin UK

• The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

  John Steinbeck

  Horse, Book, Writing

  "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". Book by John Steinbeck, 1976.

• I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Home, Mean

• Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Mean, Mad

• Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.

  John Steinbeck

  Friendship, Book

• He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.

  John Steinbeck

  Father, Book, Eden

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.38, Penguin

• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.372, Penguin

• To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

  John Steinbeck

  Country, Rain, Book

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.2, Hamilton Books

• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton. Chapter "On Publishing", 1977.

• I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Talking, Guy

  John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.38, Penguin

• A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Past

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

  John Steinbeck

  Pain, Book, Taken

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.

  John Steinbeck

  Running, Book, Writing

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Long Valley”, p.7, Penguin

• I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Character

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.133, Penguin

• They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

  John Steinbeck

  Real, Book, Writing

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.115, Penguin

• Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Land, Heaven

  John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.36, Hamilton Books

• ...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Men, Hands

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.247, Penguin

• When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Marine

  "Cannery Row".

• Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Nuts, Guy

  John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.35, Hamilton Books

• The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Reality, Design

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.29, Penguin

• A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

  John Steinbeck

  Running, Book, Rivers

  John Steinbeck (1965). “Of mice and men”, Bantam

• A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, People, Forgiving

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.144, Penguin

• The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.

  John Steinbeck

  Confused, Book, Reality

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.29, Penguin

• For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Feelings, Firsts

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.26, Penguin

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