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"During the years he was never sick, except of course for the chronic indigestion which was universal, and still is, with men who live alone, cook for themselves, and eat in solitude."
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"I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented."
"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."
"She didn't want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her."
"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace."
"And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it."
"An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him."
"Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection."
"I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company."
Explore more quotes by John Steinbeck
"Well, we all got to make a livin'.""Yeah," Tom said. "On'y I wisht they was some way to make her 'thout takin' her away from somebody else."
"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."
"I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate."
"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
"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 men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught."
"In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground."
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