John Steinbeck

"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."

"It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits…"

"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."

"Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man."

"In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and near…"

"I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride…"

"This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me."

"Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you."