top of page
"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 fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Family quotes

"Children see beauty in everything."

"Mothers care in volumes of tears and earnestness of prayers and a depth of emotion others cannot fathom."

"Never sever ties with a family member you once loved. Each of you might be on different spiritual paths, but both trails are leading you home."
Explore more quotes by John Steinbeck

"A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically."

"...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."

"Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra."

"The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer."

"It's all fine to say, "Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget-and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change."

"The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual."

"Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans."

"Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments."

"Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing."
bottom of page