Sometimes, a lie is told 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.
("East of Eden")
More Quotes from John Steinbeck:
I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.John Steinbeck
You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.
John Steinbeck
Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.
John Steinbeck
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history; repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
John Steinbeck
I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.
John Steinbeck
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
John Steinbeck
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