American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash -- all of them -- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild a reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other, but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness -- chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea. When an Indian village became too deep in its own filth, the inhabitants moved. And we have no place to which to move.

— John Steinbeck

Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.

— John Steinbeck

And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

— John Steinbeck

And don't worry about losing. If I am right, it happens - the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

— John Steinbeck

And he didn't get tired or sleepy, for the beauty burned in him like fire.

— John Steinbeck

And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have not bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'thou gayest'.

— John Steinbeck

And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone, or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar.

— John Steinbeck

And is usually true of a man of one idea, [Charles] became obsessed.

— John Steinbeck

...and it is generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended. This last, of course, excludes, those dismal slave parties, whipped and controlled and dominated, given by an ogreish professional hostess. These are not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as it's end product.

— John Steinbeck

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

— John Steinbeck