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The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.

— John Steinbeck Tortilla Flat (1935)

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More quotes by John Steinbeck

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Journal of a Novel (1969)

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone.

East of Eden (1952)

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is — and a woman too, I guess.

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man.

East of Eden (1952)

All John Steinbeck quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Steinbeck (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.