Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)

by John Steinbeck

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

It is the hour of the pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.

You have to pick your hitchhikers very carefully. It’s best to get an experienced one, for he relapses into silence. But the new ones try to pay for their ride by being interesting.

For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism—either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.

“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

I mind that I loved cypress and roses, clear, The great blue mountains and the small gray hills, The sounding of the sea. Upon a day I saw strange eyes and hands like butterflies; For me at morning larks flew from the thyme And children came to bathe in little streams.