Book of Quotes

The Pearl

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

- "For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more.  And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have."

- "Luck, you see, brings bitter friends."

- "He said, 'I am a man,' and that meant certain things to Juana.  It meant that he was half insane and half god."

- "The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side."

- "It is not good to want a thing too much.  It sometimes drives the luck away.  You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods."

- "This was an evil beyond thinking.  The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing or a boat.  For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal."

- "It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea.  Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it.  And yet is was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana has need of a man; she could not live without a man."

- "When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast.  They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.  Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation." 

- "A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced.  A plan once made and visualized becomes reality along with other realities - never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked."

- "She knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near."

- "For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it."

- "A town is a thing like a colonial animal.  A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet.  A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike.  And a town has a whole emotion.  How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved.  News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences."

- "But now, by saying what his future was going to be like, he had created it.  A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced.  A plan once made and visualized becomes a along with other realities - never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked."

- "Some day, his mind said, that boy would know what things were in the books and what things were not."

- "And because they were in some way one thing and one purpose, she smiled with him. 

And they began this day with hope."

- "There is a great deal to be seen in the tilt of a hat on a man."

- "Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy.  The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld.  The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it."

- "And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in between anywhere."

- "And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book." 

- "She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done.  But the remedy lacked his authority because it was simple and didn't cost anything."

- "They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway."

- "He did not know, and perhaps this doctor did.  And he could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against this man's possible knowledge.  He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until, as he had said, they could be sure that the things in the books are really in the books."

- "But in the song there was a secret little inner song, hardly perceptible, but always there, sweet and secret and clinging, almost hiding in the counter-melody, and this were the Song of the Pearl That Might Be . . ."

- "The ants were busy on the ground, big black ones with shiny bodies and the little dusty quick ants.  Kino watched with the detachment of God while a dusty ant frantically tried to escape the sand trap an ant lion had dug for him. 

He watched the ants moving, a little column of them near to his foot, and he put his foot in their path.  Then the column climbed over his instep and continued on its way, and Kino left his foot there and watched them move over it."

- "Part of the far shore disappeared into a shimmer that looked like water.  There was no certainty in seeing, no proof that what you saw was there or was not there.  And the people of the Gulf expected all places were that way, and it was not strange to them."

- ". . . first the strangers came with arguement 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."

- "It was supposed that the pearl buyers were individuals acting alone, bidding against one another for the pearls the fisherman brought in.  And once it had been so.  But this was a wasteful method, for once, in the excitement of bidding for a fine pearl, too great a price had been paid to the fisherman.  This was extravagant and not to be countenanced.  Now there was only one pearl buyer with many hands, and the men who sat in their offices and waited for Kino knew what price they would offer, how high they would bid, and what method each on would use.  And although these men would not profit beyond their salaries, there was excitement among the pearl buyers, for there was excitement in the hunt, and if it be a man's it as far down as possible.  For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.  Quite apart from any reward they might get, from any word of praise, from any promotion, a pearl buyer was a pearl buyer, and the best and happiest pearl buyer was he who bought for the lowest price."

- "They were students of the expressions of young women as they went in to confession, and they saw them as they came out and read the nature of the sin."

- "If every single man and woman, child and baby, acts and conducts itself in a known pattern and breaks no walls and differs with no one and experiments in no way and is not sick and does not endanger the ease and peace of mind or steady unbroken flow of the town, then that unit can disappear and never be heard of."