Julia

“But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance tuns outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true, that we are all descendants of the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers, and brawlers. But also the brave, and independent, and generous. If our ancestors hadn't been that, they would've stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.”

“Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it. He hated it.”

“Did he, now?” Adam asked...

“Now you question it, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether he hated it or I hate it for him... Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small... Maybe kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses! The whole world over his fence!”

“We’re only talking about making a living.”

“A living? Or money?” Lee said excitedly. “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury, and they want love, and they want admiration.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In Wenceslaus Square, in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head, and says: "I know just what you mean.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting