East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

Adam felt that he was sleepwalking. It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.

Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong.

“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”

“You’re going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

Lee said, “Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”

know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don’t believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That’s a running sore.”

“My father made a mold and forced me into it,” Adam said. “I was a bad casting but I couldn’t be remelted. Nobody can be remelted. And so I remained a bad casting.”

Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good.” “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?”

“Maybe you’ll come to know that every man in every generation is refired.