John Steinbeck Quotes

Some days I would go without any fire at all, and eat raw frozen meat and melt snow in my mouth for water.

The rules of survival never change, whether you're in a desert or in an arena.

Mountaineering is one of the most difficult sports - we are away from routine life for days, living in tents, and it requires high degree of physical and mental strength.

I always thought the desert was the antithesis of peace - something that attacks you. So you don't go to the desert for peace.

I always thought that people who live in the desert are a little crazy. It could be that the desert attracts that kind of person, or that after living there, you become that. It doesn't make much difference. But now I've done my 40 years in the desert.

For me, climbing has always been about adventure and that involves difficulties, danger and exposure, so I deliberately set out to climb with as little equipment as possible.

The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

The high desert has an effect on people. The place has a way of swallowing you up.

There was a sharp crack from somewhere on the mountain. Then another. It's just a tree falling, he said. It's okay. The boy was looking at the dead roadside trees. It's okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

I think there is something very interesting about people who live day to day in an environment where they could get taken out by a wild animal. There has to be some kind respect that is derived from that relationship.

I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.

The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. (Varys)

The desert is no longer a landscape, it is a pure form produced by the abstraction of all others.

Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods

Wow, you survived a blackout. You're made of stronger stuff than ice cream.

But you can't kill humans It's-- Evil? The world is evil Risika. Wolves hunt the stragglers in a group of deer. Vultures devour the fallen.Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey, trembling because the night is dark.

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.

If you're going to risk dying, there's no sense doing it wet, cold and hungry unless absolutely necessary.

To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization.

The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.