John Steinbeck

United States
27 Feb 1902 // 20 Dec 1968
Writer

Time and Memory

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

John Steinbeck, in 'East of Eden'
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
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Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
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