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Posts tagged ‘John Steinbeck’

Quotes of the Day!

Recently I read The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. My wife loved it, I’ll give it a resounding “eh.” But Steinbeck did have a way with words, so while I didn’t love the book, I still really enjoyed his use of language. The quotes are of course better with the context of what is happening around them, but some are still nice even while isolated. And, I should add, the book is good, there is no doubt about that.

 

The banker’s voice became frosty. “I don’t understand.” His inflection said he did understand and found it stupid, and his tone twisted a bitterness in Ethan, and the bitterness spawned a lie.

 

It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder: If I’ve missed this, what else have I failed to see?

 

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.

 

It has been my experience to put aside a decision for future pondering. Then one day, fencing a piece of time to face the problem, I have found it already completed, solved, and the verdict taken. This must happen to everyone, but I have no way of knowing that. It’s as though, in the dark and desolate caves of the mind, a faceless jury had met and decided.

 

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This, dear reader, is a picture of a good day.

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Quotes of the Day!

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Quotes of the Day!

The quotes today are from John Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row.

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Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

but Alfred has triumphed over his environment and has brought his environment up with him

Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom.

While he was looking for a question Doc asked one. Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits.

It had become his custom, each time he was deserted, to buy a gallon of wine, to stretch out on the comfortably hard bunk and get drunk. Sometimes he cried a little all by himself but it was luxurious stuff and he usually had a wonderful feeling of well-being from it.

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