John Steinbeck
Nobel Prize In Literature 1962
I first read Steinbeck when I was around 25. My dad mentioned to me that he was reading Steinbeck and thought I might enjoy his writings as well. I DID! I LOVE Steinbeck's way with words and amazing talent in creating characters. You find yourself so involved with his characters that you are sure you know them. It is because we have all known people like them I think.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968), born in Salinas, California
TURN ON SOME MUSIC
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TURN ON SOME MUSIC
listen to some Buffalo Springfield
as you enjoy my lens!
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Three reasons to love John Steinbeck
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Three reasons to love John Steinbeck?
Tortilla Flat
Cannery Row
Of Mice and Men
Great John Steinbeck stuff from Amazon
John Steinbeck Quotes
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
John Steinbeck
A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
John Steinbeck
Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
John Steinbeck
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
John Steinbeck
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
John Steinbeck
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck
I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
John Steinbeck
I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
John Steinbeck
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John Steinbeck
I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
John Steinbeck
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
John Steinbeck
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John Steinbeck
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
John Steinbeck
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
John Steinbeck
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
John Steinbeck
It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
John Steinbeck
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
John Steinbeck
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
John Steinbeck
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
John Steinbeck
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
John Steinbeck
Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
John Steinbeck
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
John Steinbeck
Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
John Steinbeck
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
John Steinbeck
No one wants advice - only corroboration.
John Steinbeck
One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
John Steinbeck
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
John Steinbeck
Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
John Steinbeck
So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.
John Steinbeck
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
John Steinbeck
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John Steinbeck
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.
John Steinbeck
Time is the only critic without ambition.
John Steinbeck
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
John Steinbeck
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
John Steinbeck
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
John Steinbeck
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
John Steinbeck
Pele and Her Undying Vengeance No Matter a Fairies Plea
A Poem by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen
A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ. ~John Steinbeck
As I read that by Steinbeck I had to consider a certain sadness that many have and how destructive it can be. I fold into that air as well at times. Thus I write these poems that express it. Steinbeck was such a creative force that brings me to my knees.. to pray for my own creative life to know what he knew.
"Pele and Her Undying Vengeance No Matter a Fairies Plea"
Out beyond the minds eye
there stood a delicate forest
lighted by hope
that glowed.
Yet the Caitiff found it
and the fairies
alas
ever so pathetically
innocent
stood in the open pathway
for they
just
did not know.
And so
alas
they sat in waiting
unsuspecting
of a fires power
and the eminent cruelty
approaching
that would ultimately
be
bestowed.
There would be no allies
rushing in to save them.
Flower nymphs
innocent
stayed huddled from the wind
waiting for a moment
when rain
would once again
find its way past the trees
and toss them
to a fairy's soft breeze.
Ohh human butterfly
and their wings
fluttering
no place to hide
no refuse
no wiping of tears
after sorrow
making them
and me... I might add
wise spies
of undying hopefulness.
Tall along the landscape
in a far off land
there are trees
captured
to this very day.
Take a moment
and remember them
like the lily and flowers in waiting
fore time sets on every sunrise
and sunset
in waiting.
Pele set her mark
fire breathing past a lily
no matter
a flowers
pleading
heart.
Pele has her own marks
forever
to impart.
Made into statues
tall posts
reminding all who seek
a history
in love
there was once an angel
a fairies song undying
chanting
with memories
knowing
and yes
understanding
of Pele
and her undying
love.
And so
let it be known
on any shoreline
that a hope is a hope
no matter the skyline.
ABOUT Kathy Ostman-Magnusen: I am an artist, represented by Monkdogz Urban Art, New York. ORIGINAL ART may be purchased through Monkdogz: http://www.monkdogz.com/chelseagallery/artistart/M...
FREE ART GIFTS, suitable for children plus prints, giclees, cards, available on my website: http://www.kathysart.com
the image is of my sculpture "Bleeding Wings 5"
The Night John Steinbeck Died
Neil Young
Neil young singing for the people.
Four Strong Winds (farmaid 2007 )
I Met a Mystic Along a Dusty Pathway
A poem by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen
Thinking of the way Steinbeck brought out characters in his stories .. ahh such a MASTER!
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There was a mystic
along the pathway
I saw him from a distance.
It became clear as I approached him
that I
was in the face of truth.
My eyes blurred
mixed with tears
for I had never seen magic
up close before.
I had never embraced the truth
in such pure form
as that afternoon
there on a simple dirt road.
I could not speak.
I could barely think really
it was a day that felt too bright
to look upon
and so
I did indeed
look away from him
as he began to pass me by.
He didn't pass me by though.
No
he stood directly in front of me.
I had nowhere to look
but up.
Up to see his eyes on mine.
Feelings of being found out
my plight
my woes
my insecurities
about a forever meaning
he seemed to spy them all.
I was
to me at least
exposed.
What is it that causes us to spill all
when confronted with pure honesty?
Embracing it seemed past logic
it encompassed a certain instinct
one that reels in misgivings about grace.
My will was overpowered
not because I had been beaten into submission
not because proof had glared at me
causing me to succumb.
No
It was a holiness that filled the air
a rainbow on my skin
and a dance
that lead past the skyline.
What I expected from his eyes
seeing me
seeing through me
was a book of rules...
Now you do this
and no more of that.
But the Mystic
only gave me an empty pages
and said
Find your own way
and with every step you take
remember your place in this world
for it is just as holy
as the dawning of a recognition
a removed veil
that reveals the pureness of beauty itself.
Open your eyes
and see the light of creativity.
It has been present all the while
you simply lost your way
and stopped looking for it.
Open your eyes
for a host of elegance displayed.
I could not accept such generosity.
But what about the list
of things that are wrong with me
I don't see it within these pages.
There is no need to write that down
he calmly said
those things seem to burn within you
on their own
you already know your frailties.
Focus on the lovely things
know when others need your help
in seeing those things too.
Take of your shoes
if someone needs them
and you'll be fine.
I wanted to fall to the ground
kiss his feet
but in the very moment
that I accepted his words
he was...
gone.
I thought of Rumi then
of that quote I had rehearsed so many times:
"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." ~ Rumi
And there
along the roadside
I did kiss the ground.
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ABOUT Kathy Ostman-Magnusen: I am an artist, represented by Monkdogz Urban Art, New York. ORIGINAL ART may be purchased through Monkdogz: http://www.monkdogz.com/chelseagallery/artistart/M...
FREE ART GIFTS,suitable for children plus prints, giclees, cards, available on my website: http://www.kathysart.com
Quick, what do you think of John Steinbeck?
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth (Monterey 1967)
Neil Young OLD MAN
Old Man lyrics:
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.
Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
The music of Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young
John Steinbeck Link List
- Welcome to the National Steinbeck Center
WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL STEINBECK CENTER IN THE HEART OF STEINBECK COUNTRY In the tradition of John Steinbeck, the National Steinbeck Center draws its inspiration from the diverse people and the land of the Salinas Valley. Through the exploration of - John Steinbeck - Biography
Nobel Foundation Nobel Media Nobel Museum Nobel Peace Center Nobel Web SEARCH CONTACT US HOME NOBEL PRIZES ALFRED NOBEL PRIZE AWARDERS NOMINATION PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENTS AWARD CEREMONIES EDUCATIONAL GAMES John Steinbeck (1902-1968), bo - John Steinbeck: The California Novels
Character lists, plot summaries, maps and other supplementary material for Steinbeck's California novels... The California Novels The Pastures of Heaven The Red Pony To A God Unknown Tortilla Flat In Dubious Battle Of Mice And Men The Long Valley
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