Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature has existed since the beginning of human communication and continues to evolve to meet our needs.
This quote by John Steinbeck emphasizes the intrinsic connection between literature and human expression. It suggests that literature originated from humanity's fundamental need to communicate and share experiences, and while it has transformed over time, its importance in fulfilling this need has only amplified.
Themes
LiteratureCommunicationHuman ExperienceExpressionEvolution
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club meeting to discuss the relevance of literature in today's society.
More from John Steinbeck
All quotes βAt one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
John SteinbeckRead
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John SteinbeckRead
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
John SteinbeckRead
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
John SteinbeckRead
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
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Similar quotes
If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.
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If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
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For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history.
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However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
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