“Lennie rolled off the bunk and stood up, and the two of them started for the door. Just as they reached it, Curley bounced in."You seen a girl around here?" he demanded angrily.George said coldly, "'Bout half an hour ago maybe.""Well, what the hell was she doin'?"George stood still, watching the angry little man. He said insultingly, "She said--she was lookin' for you."Curley seemed really to see George for the first time. His eyes flashed over George, took in his height, measured his reach, looked at his trim middle. "Well, which way'd she go?" he demanded at last."I dunno," said George. "I didn't watch her go."Curley scowled at him, and turning, hurried out the door.George said, "Ya know, Lennie, I'm scared I'm gonna tangle with that bastard myself. I hate his guts. Jesus Christ! Come on. There won't be a damn thing left to eat.”

“A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson”

“I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need... Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not.-Uncle John”

“There’s a passage in John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” that does a pretty good job describing California’s rainfall patterns:The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come ...”

“I guess there are never enough books.”

“The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.”

“Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

“The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb.”

“Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.''We take a beatin' all the time.''I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'.”

“Look out for luck. You can't trus' luck.”

“I climb fences when i got fences to climb.”