Book of Quotes

The Grapes of wrath

The Grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck

- "There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do."

- "And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed."

- "it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials."

- "You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff"

- "How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?"

- "The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

- "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."

- "Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it."

- "Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother."

- "Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one."

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

- "She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall."

- "If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich."

- "Sure, cried the tenant men,but it's our land...We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours....That's what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it."

"We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man."

"Yes, but the bank is only made of men."

"No, you're wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."

- "A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east."

- "Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor."

- "The Western States nervous under the beginning change.