East of Eden Quotes

"Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good."

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?"

*

"I had to find out my stupidities for myself. These were my stupidities: I thought the good are destroyed while the evil survive and prosper.

'I thought that once an angry and disgusted God poured molten fire from a crucible to destroy or to purify his little handiwork of mud.

I thought I had inherited both the scars of the fire and the impurities which made the fire necessary - all inherited, I thought..."

"Maybe you'll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup - thin, strong, translucent?" He held his cup to the light. "All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that - more fire. And then either the slag heap, or perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection." He drained his cup and he said loudly, "Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us - would stop trying?" --John Steinbeck