East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

“Hello, Ching Chong. Bossy man here?”

“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.” “No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie.

“Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well.

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.’

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind.

“Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth? Couldn’t some pains and insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?”

Olive and Ernest Steinbeck,

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“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?”

“Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

“I can’t tell you how to live your life,” Samuel said, “although I do be telling you how to live it.

timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that

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‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

the high white house of Ernest Steinbeck.

Come to think of it, none of the Hamiltons, with all their versatility, had any versatility in love. None of them seemed capable of light or changeable love.

He was manufacturing happiness as cleverly as he knew how, molding it and shaping it.

“Adam,” he said, “I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddam lonesome in my life.”

Abra had lost her gift for being alone.

Cal had to learn loneliness.

And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

“Why do you walk around so much at night?”

Always before, Cal had wanted to build a dark accumulation of things seen and things heard—a

“I don’t know. I get restless at night—like an alley cat, I guess.” He thought of Kate and his weak joke seemed horrible to him. “When I can’t sleep I walk around,” he said, “to try to blot it out.”

Her clothes had the strained cleanliness that means poverty.

He’s lonelier than you are because he has no lovely future to dream about. Go through the motions.

Abra wasn’t aware that she spoke exclusively of herself.

And here he was now—look at him—a rap against him, working in a whorehouse when other men had homes and cars.

We stood stiffly side by side and we said in unison, “Hoch der Kaiser!”

But Adam’s pictures were frozen. There was no motion or emotion in them—illustrations in the pages of a book, and not very well drawn.

Abra—well, of Abra he made his immaculate dream and, having created her, fell in love with her.

He remembered that Abra had once suggested that they go to live on the ranch, and that became his dream. He remembered the great oaks and the clear living air, the clean sage-laced wind from the hills and the brown oak leaves scudding. He could see Abra there, standing under a tree, waiting for him to come in from his work.

Give the money, but give it lightly. Don’t depend on anything. Don’t foresee anything.

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.”

“Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

To put it straight—the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: “Timshel!”