Top 13 Thomas Steinbeck Quotes

The biggest impact my father had on my life was teaching the importance of literacy.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

My father believed, like Pericles, that a man’s genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.

My father, John Steinbeck, was a man who held human history in great reverence, and in particular the biographies of those people who had risked their lives, their fortunes, and their worldly honor to defend the rights and prerogatives of those who were powerless to defend themselves.

From my father’s point of view, without a thought for self, a true patriot stands up against the stones of condemnation and speaks for those who are given no real voice in the halls of justice or the halls of government.

I thought my dad was out of work, because my friends had fathers with briefcases who’d go off somewhere with bow ties on. But my father would finish breakfast and go back to his room.

For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.

I like writing, but I write for self-improvement more than I do for money.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Chinese. This goes a long way back to my childhood. The Chinese invented money, movable type, clocks, and built the largest ships in the history of the world.

Plot makes the character just as history makes the man.

My father told us all the time: to become a good writer takes writing. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. It’s like bull-riding. You can’t do it once, you know. You’ve got to practice it and practice it.

My father thought of himself as a tradesman. A craftsman.

My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.