What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

Let’s say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out...

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too...

She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic pattern where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days...

Strength and success – they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in...

I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and they walked...

You fellas don’ know what you’re doin. You’re helpin to starve kids…You don’ know what you’re a’ doin’.

for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips – blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so...

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 to...

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people...

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. It was very far inland that...

Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to

There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every...

He had drawn a derogatory statement from George. He felt safe now.

Relationship Time to Aloneness.” Having a companion fixes you in time and that of the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present and future all flow together. A memory, a present...

There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.

Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it’s part of him, and it’s like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it...

Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches – nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.Literature is...

…Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the...

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

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...

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

I eat stories like grapes.

I know, Ma. I’m a-tryin’. But them deputies- Did you ever see a deputy that didn’t have a fat ass? An’ they waggle their ass an’ flop their gun aroun’. Ma”, he said, “if it...

Why do men like me want sons?” he wondered. “It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not...

When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know it is not. This helps you take the job seriously and do your best on...

It has always seemed strange to me…The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed,...

She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with...

You see, I have been at revaluing myself in the last few days. I may have some value to historians because I have destroyed a few things. The builder of your Cathedral is forgotten even...

But you can’t start. Only a baby can start. You and me – why, we’re all that’s been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that’s us. This land, this red land, is us;...

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. … When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction.

Sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have.

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.

Curley’s wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was pretty and simple, and...

It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.

A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would...

Casy said solemnly, “This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ just died out of it. I don’t know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’...

She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or...

To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can’t even imagine the forest colors when I am not...

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it – the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and...

You don’t even know where I’m going.””I don’t care. I’d like to go anywhere.

Will liked to live so that no one could find fault with him, and to do that he had to live as nearly like other people as possible.

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...

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.

I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don’t need… Stuff settin’ out there, you jus’ feel like buyin’ it whether you need it or not.-Uncle John

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.