East Of Eden Quotes

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.

But ‘Thou mayest!’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents…. The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that there’s never been a great creative collaboration. When the Beatles first burst on the scene, I thought they were proving him wrong. Later, we learned that Lennon and McCartney had each composed their pop masterpieces separately, individually. So it goes.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion.

When a man comes to die,
no matter what his talents and influences and genius,
if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him
and his dying a cold horror.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.