John Steinbeck Quotes About Past

Quotes about: Past

• You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

  John Steinbeck

  Past, People, Three

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.159, Penguin

• A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory

  John Steinbeck

  Past, Greatness, People

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.318, Penguin

• Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

  John Steinbeck

  Sweet, Farewell, Saying Goodbye

• And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

  John Steinbeck

  Prayer, Men, Past

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.29, Hamilton Books

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

  John Steinbeck

  Past, Wrath, Knows

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.70, Hamilton Books

• A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Character, Past

• 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

• They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)

  John Steinbeck

  Dark, Past, Deserving It

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.143, Penguin

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