The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

The monster isn’t men, but it can make men do what it wants.

“But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.” “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all.

“Ain’t you thinkin’ what’s it gonna be like when we get there? Ain’t you scared it won’t be nice like we thought?” “No,” she said quickly. “No, I ain’t. You can’t do that. I can’t do that. It’s too much—livin’ too many lives. Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one. If I go ahead on all of ‘em, it’s too much.

For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.”

Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action.

“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an’ maybe he’s disappointed that nothin’ he can do’ll make him feel rich—not

never seen nobody that’s busy as a prairie dog collectin’ stuff that wasn’t disappointed.”

No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.

in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones.”

It’s need that makes all the trouble.