“East of Eden” by John Steinbeck is a classic novel that explores themes of love, life, and wisdom. Here are 20 quotes from the book that capture some of its profound insights:
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
“The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”
“It is a lonely thing to be a child. It is a lonely thing to be afraid.”
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.”
“You’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief.”
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
“I have a suspicion that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*** her anymore.”
“When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone.”
“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.”
“People are good because they’re afraid of going to hell, and bad because they’re afraid of losing their jobs.”
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.”
“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”
“It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world.”
“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”
“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—’Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.'”
“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
“We’re born with a number of senses, each one with its own door that opens into the world. You’re born a physical creature and you’re born with a sense of movement. Every baby has a driving need to move—drive that is immediately stopped by the imprisoning crib.”
“It’s more than the uniform. It’s the deep assumption that came out of the pioneer days: This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do in life, not by what your grandfather did.”
These quotes capture the depth and richness of Steinbeck’s exploration of human nature and the complexities of life in “East of Eden.”