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.”

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.”

“Time is the only critic without ambition.”

“Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.”

“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.”

“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”

“It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“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. And to prod all these there...”

“The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.”

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

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

“A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.”

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium...”

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

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”

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

“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.”

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

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