Steinbeck Grapes Of Wrath Quotes & Sayings

In the souls of the people The Grapes of Wrath are Filling and Growing Heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

Happy 112th Birthday John Steinbeck. — John Steinbeck

Her face looked for the answer that is always concealed in language. — John Steinbeck

We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't a man. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men. — John Steinbeck

I'm glad there's love here. That's all. — John Steinbeck

They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life. — John Steinbeck

I ain't gonna try to teach 'em nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn. — John Steinbeck

He liked to think he was in on the secrets she had. When she smiled slyly, he smiled slyly too, and they exchanged confidences in whispers. The world had drawn close around them, and they were in the center of it, or rather Rose of Sharon was in the center of it with Connie making a small orbit about her. Everything they said was a kind of secret. — John Steinbeck

Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.'
'We take a beatin' all the time.'
'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'. — John Steinbeck

Look out for luck. You can't trus' luck. — John Steinbeck

I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in their heads ... every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. — John Steinbeck

They got to live before they can afford to die. — John Steinbeck

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter. — Khaled Hosseini

The way he talked about moving south reminded us of the Joads in Grapes of Wrath. He was a smart kid, but all he was thinking about was peaches.
-Only Shot At A Good Tombstone, page 24 — Robert R. Mitchell

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on. — John Steinbeck

The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness. — John Steinbeck

I climb fences when i got fences to climb. — John Steinbeck

And in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. — John Steinbeck

Jus' live the day. Don' worry yaself. — John Steinbeck

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

I ain't sleepin'. I got too much to puzzle with. — John Steinbeck

I never fixed no car in my life 'thout cuttin' myself. Now it's done I don't have to worry no more. — John Steinbeck

I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression. — Lou Holtz

You got to think about that day, an' then the nex' day. Jus' take ever' day. — John Steinbeck

Got a lot of sinful idears
but they seem kinda sensible. — John Steinbeck

An' I got to thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'. — John Steinbeck

We got to get thinkin' about doin' stuff that means somepin. — John Steinbeck

I seen fellas like you before. You ain't askin' nothin'; you're jus' singin' a kinda song. 'What we comin' to?' You don' wanta know. Country's movin' aroun', goin' places. They's folks dyin' all aroun'. Maybe you'll die pretty soon, but you won't know nothin'. I seen too many fellas like you. You don't want to know nothin'. Just sing yourself to sleep with a song - 'What we comin' to? — John Steinbeck

We'll start over. But you can't start. Only a baby can start — John Steinbeck

I was mean life a wolf. Now i'm mean like a weasel. When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted
that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong; maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain't no hunter no more. — John Steinbeck

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

And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
The Grapes Of Wrath — 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

When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement. — Philipp Meyer

It ain't kin we? It's will we? — John Steinbeck

This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. — John Steinbeck

And her eyes were on the highway, where life whizzed by. — John Steinbeck

I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes. — John Steinbeck

From the Grapes of Wrath and a woman that would not be moved: 'On'y way you gonna get me to go is whup me.' She moved the jack handle gently again. 'An' I'll shame you, Pa. I won't take no whuppin', cryin' an' a-beggin'. I'll light into you. An' you ain't so sure you can whup me anyways. An' if ya do get me, I swear to God I'll wait till you got your back turned, or you're settin' down, an' I'll knock you belly-up with a bucket. I swear to Holy Jesus' sake I will. — John Steinbeck

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it. — John Steinbeck