The Grapes Of Wrath Quotes
"The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet."
"Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it."
"The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk."
"Men and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes."
"The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it."
"Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole."
"The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat."
"The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust."
"And the women went quickly, quietly back into the houses and herded the children ahead of them."
"The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."
"You can’t make a living on the land unless you’ve got two, five, ten thousand acres and a tractor."
"The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses."
"I been thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'."
"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?"
"You're buying a little girl plaiting the forelocks, taking off her hair ribbon to make bows, standing back, head cocked, rubbing the soft noses with her cheek."
"We can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me—why, we're all that's been."
"I'm glad of the holiness of breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all."
"When shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, we'll have the rifle."
"You're buying what will plow your own children under. And you won't see. You can't see."
"Tommy, I got to thinkin' an' dreamin' an' wonderin'. They say there's a hun'erd thousand of us shoved out."
"I wisht I had a girl. She likes to braid the manes and forelocks, puts little red bows on them. Likes to do it. Not any more."
"Sometimes I think I might. But I know I won't. I know perfectly well the last minute I'd run and hide like a damn old graveyard ghost."
"It's too much—living too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousand lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll only be one."
"People in flight from the terror behind—strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever."
"The tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil."
"The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, knows the land that is more than its analysis."
"But how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith."
"We saw the windows reddening under the first color of the sun. And then the hill cut them off."
"When she spoke her voice had a beautiful low timbre, soft and modulated, and yet with ringing overtones."
"The world had drawn close around them, and they were in the center of it."
"The shadow of someone walking between the tent and the sun crossed the canvas."
"I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, and that's what matters."
"They's gonna come a thing that's gonna change the whole country."
"The money we'd make wouldn't do no good. All we got is the family unbroke."
"Sometimes the law can't be followed, not in decency, anyway."
"I wisht I could tell you so you'd know, but I can't."
"They was too old. They wouldn't of saw nothin' that's here."
"Tommy's growed way up—way up so I can't get aholt of him sometimes."
"And the hunger was gone from them, the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots."
"Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money."
"They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy birds’ first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the first light to go out to the dear acres."
"Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it."
"The great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away."
"The dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand."
"And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed."
"Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat."
"When a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need."
"They ain’t no vegetables nor chickens nor pigs at the farms. They raise one thing—cotton, say, or peaches, or lettuce."
"And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out."
"The night that Maggie died, she called me to her side, an’ give to me them ol’ red flannel drawers that Maggie wore."
"I can remember how the mountains were, sharp as old teeth beside the river where Noah walked. I can remember how the stubble was on the ground where Grampa lies. I can remember the chopping block back home with a feather caught on it, all crisscrossed with cuts, and black with chicken blood."
"We're Joads. We don't look up to nobody. Grampa's grampa, he fought in the Revolution. We were farm people till the debt. And then—them people. They did something to us. Every time they come it seemed like they were whipping me—all of us. But now I ain't ashamed. These folks is our folks—is our folks."
"If a body's ever taken charity, it makes a burn that don't come out. This ain't charity, but if you ever took it, you don't forget it."
"We had all that out. There ain't no charity in this here camp. We won't have no charity."
"I've seen the ducks today, wedging south—high up. Seems like they're awful dinky. And I've seen the blackbirds sitting on the wires, and the doves were on the fences."
"I was a recruit against Geronimo. Them Indians were cute—slick as snakes, and quiet when they wanted. Could go through dry leaves and make no rustle. Try to do that sometime."
"I ain't never been so sad in my life. And I laid my sights on his belly, 'cause you can't stop an Indian no other place—and—then. Well, he just plunked down and rolled. And we went up. And he wasn't big—he'd looked so grand—up there. All tore to pieces and little."
"Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, every feather drawn and painted, and even his eyes drawn in pretty? And bang! You pick him up—bloody and twisted, and you spoiled something better than you; and eating him don't never make it up to you, 'cause you spoiled something in yourself, and you can't never fix it up."
"I’d cord ’em up aroun’ me like wood, an’ I’d eat my way out."
"Who says it’s bad? Who dares to say it’s bad?"
"An’ as you play, you learn new tricks, new ways to mold the tone with your hands."
"I was to a show oncet that was me, an’ more’n me."
"If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones."
"The more you got, the more you want, and the only thing you can take with you is what you've given away."
"Seems like our life’s over and done, but it ain’t. It’s the stars and the sun. A new day's begun, and life’s goin’ on."
"How can you tell? What's to keep everything from stopping; all the folks from just getting tired and laying down?"
"Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head."
"I never seen no cotton like this here California cotton. Long fiber, best damn cotton I ever seen."
"This ain’t no good place. We got to get out of here."
"I been thinking how it was in that government camp, how our folks took care of theirselves, and there wasn’t no cops waggling their guns, but there was better order than them cops ever give."
"The stars were paling in the east. The wind blew softly over the willow thickets, and from the little stream came the quiet talking of the water."
"Rosasharn, you wasn't to the pancakes las' night."
"I'll keep my eye on you. Wisht we could have a doctor."
"They's rules—you got to be here a year before you can git relief."
"The earth whispered under the beat of the rain."
"The rain stopped. On the fields the water stood, reflecting the gray sky."
"The rain fell steadily, and the water flowed over the highways, for the culverts could not carry the water."