John Steinbeck Quotes

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.

You must have a place to which you can go in your heart, your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not owe anyone and where no one owes you - a place that simply allows for the blossoming of something new and promising.

I've got to have a place where I can find peace of mind.

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

I have sought for happiness everywhere, but I have found it nowhere except in a little corner with a little book.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

I feel that I need to return to the pure stillness periodically. And then, when the teaching happens, just allow it to arise out of the stillness. So the teaching and stillness are very closely connected. The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.

Excuse me if I have/some place in my mind/where I go time to time.

He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

I can watch a sunset on my own.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness; for there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as with friends.

I just increasingly enjoy the quiet moments when I can be on my own with my friends and family, or with a book, having a live experience. That's really what I crave, and I always have done.

In the quiet moments of your day, what do you think and do? When you are with your Self and no one else, how does life proceed for you? Who are you when you are alone? Self-creation is a Holy Experience. It is sacred. It is you, deciding Who You Are.

But she had long ago learned that when she wandered into the realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where not even her dearest might follow her.

The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company

My head is my favorite swimming pool.

My sorrow is my castle.

I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough.

Write what's up there." Sister Ignatius pointed at her temple. "As a great man once said, this is a secret garden. We've all got one of those." "Jesus?" "No, Bruce Springsteen.

A person has to be by himself a little bit. We weren’t born in a flock. Togetherness drives me out of my mind.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.