Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Story writing has an elusive quality that cannot be easily defined or taught.
In this quote, John Steinbeck expresses his belief that the art of story writing possesses a unique, almost magical essence that resists formulaic instruction. He suggests that despite many attempts to create a definitive guide for writing stories, the intricacies of storytelling are deeply personal and cannot be universally transferred or replicated among individuals.
Themes
StorytellingWritingArtCreativityImagination
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a workshop about creative writing to emphasize the unique nature of storytelling.
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.
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.
John SteinbeckRead
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