Thomas Steinbeck Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“My father thought of himself as a tradesman. A craftsman.”

“My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.”

“Since I can't write the greatest American novel, I'm going to write the longest American novel.”

“I thought my dad was out of work, because my friends had fathers with briefcases who'd go off somewhere with bow ties on. But my father would finish breakfast and go back to his room.”

“My father told us all the time: to become a good writer takes writing. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's like bull-riding. You can't do it once, you know. You've got to practice it and practice it.”

“The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.”

“When I was fifteen, my father gave me a first edition copy of Ray Bradbury's magnificent work, 'The Martian Chronicles.' I had read other science fiction by noted authors, but this book was something else altogether.”

“I was eighteen when I first read Joseph Heller's stunning work 'Catch-22,' and was at that time close to being drafted for the fruitless and unenlightened war in Viet Nam.”

“I would hardly say that I have a rich knowledge of anything in particular, but I do seem to be burdened with an unseemly appetite for intellectual and artistic erudition, which, for the sake of balance, I keep well harnessed to a reliable sense of the absurd.”

“When it comes to the form the narrative will take, whether first person, third person, or Aunt Grace's cat, I usually find that the story tells me which voice it prefers, and that often changes as I go along. And in the end it really doesn't matter as long as the author can rig those voices all in harness to pull the same load.”