No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

- John Steinbeck

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

- John Steinbeck

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

- John Steinbeck

No one wants advice - only corroboration.

- John Steinbeck

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

- John Steinbeck

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

- John Steinbeck

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

- John Steinbeck

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

- John Steinbeck

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.

- John Steinbeck

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

- John Steinbeck

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

- John Steinbeck

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

- John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

- John Steinbeck

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

- John Steinbeck

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

- John Steinbeck

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

- John Steinbeck

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

- John Steinbeck

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

- John Steinbeck

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

- John Steinbeck

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

- John Steinbeck