[Dessie's] shop was a unique institution in Salinas. It was a woman's world. Here all the rules, and the fears that created the iron rules, went down. The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary wh...
[...] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the unde...
You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.
You're getting well,' Samuel said. 'Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around...
You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.
You must name a thing before you can note it on your hand drawn map.
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.
Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them…I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is...
Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.
Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you...
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields.
Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids...
When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is di...
When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco the City. Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City, and so does everyone else who has ever associate...
What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals?Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the...
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
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...
We could live offa the fatta the lan'.