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 →At 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.
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The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
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People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
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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
The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.
John Edward WilliamsRead
After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it.
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As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
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That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.
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When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
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Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead