John Steinbeck Quotes

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.

The good thing about people really is their iffy-ness and dodginess, isn't it?

I'm trying to get at something a little transcendent between humans. But at the same time, there's all that baggage: What's beautiful about humans is what's balanced by what's kind of ugly and petty and depressing.

I am a man of many flaws and contradictions.

Everybody's got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

Humans are capable of so much creativity and goodness and at the same time they are destructive and cruel. (Leta)

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions-between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, cooperativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

I am inspired by so much. I am inspired by women, of course - beautiful women. I am also inspired by not so beautiful things in the world.

In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.

There is some good in the worst of us, and some evil in the best of us.

The world is awful but also the world is beautiful. Human beings are awful, but ultimately human beings are tremendous.

Every form of strength is also a form of weakness.

In every age and every man there is something to praise as well as to blame.

In all known time there has never been a greater monster or miracle than the human being.

Nobody's all good or bad, and nobody's all light or dark. Every human being has so many different aspects and facets to them. And there can be something noble and something really dark and dangerous going on in a person all at the same time.

The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful.

I'm human; that's what people don't realize.

People are beautiful wrecks.

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

Nobody's perfect, and everybody plays the heel and the baby face at times in real life.

Perfect heroes are cool, but no one can really empathize or identify with them.