...evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
Well, what you ding this kind of work for--against your own people?""Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner--and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day and it comes every day.""But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can't eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?""Can't think of that. Got to think of my own kids."***"Nearly a hundred people on the road for your three dollars. Where will we go?""And that reminds me, you better get out soon. I'm going through the dooryard after dinner...I got orders wherever there's a family not moved out--if I have an accident--you know, get too close and cave in the house a little--well, I might get a couple of dollars. And my youngest kid never had no shoes yet.""I built this with my hands...It's mine. I built it. You bump it down--I'll be in the window with a rifle...""It's not me. There's nothing I can do. I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look--suppose you kill me? They'll just hang you, but not long before you're hung there'll be another guy on the tractor, and he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right guy."***Across the dooryard the tractor cut, and the hard, foot-beaten ground was seeded field, and the tractor cut through again; the uncut space was ten feet wide. And back he came. The iron guard bit into the house-corner, crumbled the wall and wrenched the house from its foundation so that it fell sideways,crushed like a bug...The tenant man stared after [the tractor], his rifle in his hand. His wife beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor.
The Grapes of Wrath
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Well, what you ding this kind of work for--against your own people?""Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner--and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day and it comes every day.""But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can't eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?""Can't think of that. Got to think of my own kids."***"Nearly a hundred people on the road for your three dollars. Where will we go?""And that reminds me, you better get out soon. I'm going through the dooryard after dinner...I got orders wherever there's a family not moved out--if I have an accident--you know, get too close and cave in the house a little--well, I might get a couple of dollars. And my youngest kid never had no shoes yet.""I built this with my hands...It's mine. I built it. You bump it down--I'll be in the window with a rifle...""It's not me. There's nothing I can do. I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look--suppose you kill me? They'll just hang you, but not long before you're hung there'll be another guy on the tractor, and he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right guy."***Across the dooryard the tractor cut, and the hard, foot-beaten ground was seeded field, and the tractor cut through again; the uncut space was ten feet wide. And back he came. The iron guard bit into the house-corner, crumbled the wall and wrenched the house from its foundation so that it fell sideways,crushed like a bug...The tenant man stared after [the tractor], his rifle in his hand. His wife beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor.
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It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous.
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. there is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?
No one doubts your courage, but you are a headstrong knight and when you choose a way you cannot change your course even if it lead to your destruction. That is your fault and your destiny.
The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improve
In nothing is the difference between the Americans and the Soviets so marked as in the attitude, not only toward writers, but of writers toward their system. For in the Soviet Union the writer's job is to encourage, to celebrate, to explain, and in every way to carry forward the Soviet system. Whereas in America, and in England, a good writer is the watch-dog of society. His job is to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults. And this is the reason that in America neither society nor government is very fond of writers. The two are completely opposite approaches toward literature.