Joad Quotes & Sayings

A girl was just a girl to you. They wasn't nothin' to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin' their souls. An' here with all that responsibility on me I'd just get 'em frothin' with the Holy Sperit, an' then I'd take 'em out in the grass." "Maybe I should of been a preacher,' said Joad. — John Steinbeck

Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there ... I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there. Tom Joad — John Steinbeck

The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry they will write half your paper for you. — C.E.M. Joad

Look'n for a job? this is when the truck driver asks joad what he is doing and i think it indecates that this story revolves around a very hard time — John Steinbeck

Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires. — C.E.M. Joad

There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas. — C.E.M. Joad

In the most civilized and progressive countries freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle. — C.E.M. Joad

One aspect of Samantha's personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.
This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.
Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she'd been reading 'Les Miserables.'. It didn't really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author. — John Blumenthal

I tended to fall in love with characters in books. Most guys I went to school with were far too interested in sports or video games. How could they hold a candle to Mister Darcy's intensity, Tom Joad's ethics, Martin Eden's passion, Caleb Trask's struggle for goodness, or Edmond Dantes' cunning intellect? — Trisha Haddad

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the 'Grapes of Wrath,' his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day. — Jane Fonda

I am drawn to Tom Sawyer Island because a tribute to Mark Twain would not be out of place in a theme park of my own design. Should Vowell World ever get enough investors, I'm going to stick my Tom Sawyer Island in Love and Death in the American Novel Land right between the Jay Gatsby Swimming Pool and Tom Joad's Dust Bowl Lanes, a Depression-themed bowling alley renting artfully worn-out shoes. — Sarah Vowell

Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too. - Tom Joad — John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on. — Richard Corliss

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them. — C.E.M. Joad

One thing I like about the 1950s is that kids were hip without any sense of irony about it. They were dressing in fifties cool-cat clothing with complete sincerity. Nobody wanted to be"retro"back then. With the Depression still fresh in everybody's mind, did anyone in the 1950s dress up as the Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath, and go to Dust Bowl-themed parties because they thought it was cool? Probably not. In the past, the past was something you wanted to forget about rather than romanticize. I really miss those days. — Frank Conniff

Lead 'em around and around,' said Joad. "Sling 'em in the irrigation ditch. Tell 'em they'll burn in hell if they don't think like you. What the hell you want to lead 'em someplace for? Jus' lead 'em. — John Steinbeck

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family. — Andre Dubus III

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. — John Steinbeck

Joad rolled the coat up more tightly. "An old turtle,' he said. "Picked him up on the road. An old bulldozer. Thought I'd take 'im to my little brother. Kids like turtles. — John Steinbeck

Young Tom Joad and the preacher watched the turtle go - waving its legs and boosting its heavy, highdomed shell along toward the southwest. The cat crept along behind for a while, but in a dozen yards it arched its back to a strong taut bow and yawned, and came stealthily back toward the seated men.
"Where the hell you s'pose he's goin'?" said Joad. "I seen turtles all my life. They're always goin' someplace. They always seem to want to get there."
The gray cat seated itself between and behind them again. It blinked slowly. The skin over its shoulders jerked forward under a flea, and then slipped slowly
back. The cat lifted a paw and inspected it, flicked its claws out and in again experimentally, and licked its pads with a shell-pink tongue — John Steinbeck

It all depends what you mean by ... — C.E.M. Joad

We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.' - Tom Joad (Jr.) — John Steinbeck

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then ...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people cant eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they buid - I'll be there, too. — John Steinbeck

The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad. — Bruce Springsteen

First the strangers came with argument and authority and gunpowder to back up both. And in the four hundred years Kino's people had learned only one defense - a slight slitting of the eyes and a slight tightening of the lips and a retirement. Nothing could break down this wall, and they could remain whole within the wall. — John Steinbeck

War provides an outlet for every evil element in man's nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in positions of power the vulgar and base. — C.E.M. Joad

My life is spent in perpetual alternation between two rhythms,
the rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely
and the rhythm of trying to get rid of them
because I know that I am bored. — C.E.M. Joad

There was never an age in which useless knowledge was more important than in our own. — C.E.M. Joad

Automatic praise is a mere succession of noises. — C.E.M. Joad

A good soul like a good body should be as unobtrusive as possible; in so far as it functions properly, it should not be noticed for good or for ill. — C.E.M. Joad

It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The book phase would bloom and grow into a whole series of seasonal affiliations including our communist phase, our beatnik phase, our vegetarian phase, and the three-year period known as Please Don't Talk to Me. Now that we are finishing up the third decade of the book phase, we ask ourselves if we have changed. Sure, we still dress in the bruise palette of gray, black, and blue, and we still haven't gotten around to piercing our ears. But we wear lipstick now, we own high-heeled shoes. Concessions have been made. — Sarah Vowell