“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all
history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
“It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate
materials.”
“...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and 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.”
“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us
without our past?”
“The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I,"
and cuts you off forever from the "we.”
“You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff”
“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.”
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be
destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of
all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to
take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty
cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses
squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the
people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the
fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot
fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm,
it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the
banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and
bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is
a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that
topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy
trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a
profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the
certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to
rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the
guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges,
but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float
by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with
quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and
in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and 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.”
“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it!
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this
sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust,
sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus?
Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the
Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul
ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I
knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it
comes it'll on'y be one.”
“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is
man.”
“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped
over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone,
and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk
crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land
from the east.”
“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.”
“Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on
it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still
ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it."
"We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank
isn’t like a man."
"Yes, but the bank is only made of men."
"No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is
something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the
bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I
tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the
citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old
Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt
or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful
thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to
build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she
swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family
would fall.”
“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray
God some day kind people won't all be poor.”
“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an
upheaval, 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. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry
and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact
that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit
the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land
fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every
effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for
arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the
murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was
ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were
considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”
“I'm jus' pain covered with skin.”
““Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman
got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”
“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a
jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one
flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes
right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’
on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not
suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the
universe.”
“This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from
"I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have
could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate
causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were
results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the
quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off
forever from the "we". ”
“Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark.
I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry
people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be
there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -
I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready.
An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build,
why, I'll be there.”
“I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests 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.”
“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the
universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and
emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
“The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It
can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it
dies. It can't stay one size.”
“You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what
he looks like.”