Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.
Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and ye...
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, a...
Liza hated alcoholic liquors with an iron zeal. Drinking alcohol in any form she regarded as a crime against a properly outraged deity... When LIza was about seventy her elimination slowed up and her...
No one wants advice - only corroboration.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking tru...
Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passiona...
Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up...
Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know...
It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.
It is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice!
I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that'swhy.
Casy said, Ol' Tom's house can't be more'n a mile from here. Ain't she over that third rise?Sure, said Joad. Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.Your pa stole it?Sure, got it a mile an' a half ea...
But you can't start over, Only a baby can start over. You and me, Why, we're all that's been.
A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have sea...
... you can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relived when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.
Cyrus wanted a woman to take care of Adam. He needed someone to keep house and cook, and a servant cost money. He was a vigorous man and needed the body of a woman, and that too cost money- unless you...
Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well,...
There’s a passage in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden that does a pretty good job describing California’s rainfall patterns:The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful...