A Quote by John Steinbeck

Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.
I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. ... I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills.
If I could have stayed independent from the jump, then, maybe, things would have been different. 'Return of 4Eva' would have been an album instead of a mixtape.
I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking, 'What am I going to do?' My husband's view of it was, 'Stay home... We'll have more children; you'll love this.' And I was very restless about it.
It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.
One of my fondest memories was when I was in London as a young, independent businesswoman and stayed at Claridge's. I knew I had made it. To me, Claridge's is the most glamourous hotel in the world; I regard it as my home away from home. I am honoured to become part of the hotel's legacy and rich design history.
Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones out of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil.
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
Giancarlo Giammetti has a lot of nervous energy. He's a director, really. He was trying to direct the Valentino movie over my shoulder. I don't blame him - that's been his job for 50 years. But I had final cut in the movie by contract and I wouldn't have made the movie if I had not been completely independent.
It's true, we tend to write about the same thing over and over again because this is our trauma. If I had been in World War II, I might have been writing about D-Day over and over again.
During the process of writing the book, I had this experience that was telling for me. I got it and the basic idea and got the plots and everything, but I wasn't sure who the audience was. I exist in this other world - in the book publishing and magazine world of people who would make fun of this project. We were driving home after two weeks in Maine, and we stopped in a gas station in Massachusetts and saw that Snooki had just been arrested. It was a surreal moment. My last few weeks were spent trying to get in this person's head, and there she was in on the cover of the New York Post .
Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.
There is a Greco-Buddhist school of architecture and sculpture that you find everywhere in the world. It's fascinating, because Alexander died in 323 B.C. and Buddha existed around 500 B.C. But Alexander met Buddhist-type sages. And they had a different view of the world, as you know. They saw it in circular terms. They didn't need to conquer any land. And there are blond people who live in that region who are said to be descended from the soldiers who stayed. He left garrisons all over the world as he went.
Without cultural indoctrination, all of us would be atheists. Or, more specifically, while many may dream up their own gods as did our ancestors, they would certainly not be ‘Christian’ or ‘Jewish’ or ‘Muslim’ or any other established religion. That’s because, without the texts and churches and familial instruction, there are no independent evidences that any specific religion is true. Outside of the Bible, how would one hear of Jesus? The same goes for every established religion.
Maybe if audiences all over the world would check out animation from other countries, filmmakers would be more sophisticated and experimental.
There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost.
I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.
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