Cannery Row Quotes

With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row, and your magazine-husband who one day just had to go. And your gentleness now, which you just can't help but show - who among them do you think would employ you? Now you stand with your thief, you're on his parole, with your holy medallion which your fingertips fold. And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul - oh, who among them do you think could destroy you? ~ Bob Dylan

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row ~ John Steinbeck

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. ~ John Steinbeck

Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you'd shake a rug. ~ John Steinbeck

With his dripping basket and flip-flapped up the hill. Then a car turned into Cannery Row and Doc drove up to the front of the laboratory. His eyes were red rimmed with fatigue. He moved slowly with tiredness. When the car had stopped, he sat still for a moment to let the road jumps get out of his nerves. Then he climbed out of the car. At his step on the stairs, the rattlesnakes ran out their tongues and listened with their waving forked tongues. The rats scampered madly about the cages. Doc climbed the stairs. He looked in wonder at the sagging door and at the broken window. The weariness seemed to go out of him. He stepped quickly inside. Then he went quickly from room to room, stepping around the broken glass. He bent down ~ John Steinbeck

That is the way it is done, the way it has always been done. Frogs have every right to expect it will always be done that way. ~ John Steinbeck

Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor.
He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight. ~ John Steinbeck

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. ~ John Steinbeck

It is the hour of pearl - the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself. ~ John Steinbeck

Doc turned in the seat and looked back. The disappearing sun shone on his laughing face, his gay and eager face. With his left hand he held the bucking steering wheel.
Cannery Row looked after the ancient car. It made the first turn and was gone from sight behind a warehouse just as the sun was gone.
Fauna said, 'I wonder if I'd be safe to put up her gold star tonight. What the hell's the matter with you, Mack?'
Mack said, 'Vice is a monster so frightful of mien, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.' He put his arm around Hazel's shoulders. 'I think you'd of made a hell of a president,' he said. ~ John Steinbeck

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomiants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. (Cannery Row) ~ John Steinbeck

I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record. ~ Dylan Thomas

It's terrifying. Women make their first film, their second film, and then it's like a nightmare, right, to make the third or fourth? I mean, it's almost like men can have three films in a row that don't do that well and keep on going. ~ Julie Delpy

In a political fight, when you've got nothing in favour of your side, start a row in the opposition camp. ~ Huey Long

His proximity, that damn smile, just makes me hot in all the right places, but also pissed as hell. I don't know if I should knee him in the balls or hump his leg like a bitch in heat. ~ Ghiselle St. James

I've felt that I was trying to row a heavily loaded boat in a storm. I've had so much trouble just trying to keep afloat that I couldn't be bothered about things that didn't matter, things I could part with easily and not miss, like good manners and
well, things like that. I've been too afraid my boat would be swamped and so I've dumped overboard the things that seemed least important. ~ Margaret Mitchell

The attendant opened the door, and the faint barking Nina had heard before became frantic and shrill. Nina stepped into the concrete cell block and stopped, blown out of her self-absorption by the row of gray metal cages where dogs barked to get her attention. She let her breath out, horrified. "Oh, God, this is awful." "Spay your pets." The attendant stopped in front of the next to last cage. "Here you go." She jerked her head again. "Perky." Nina ~ Jennifer Crusie

One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock. ~ Richard Brautigan

No man is your friend
No man is your enemy
Every man is your teacher"
By a prisoner-Ronald Lee Sanford, on death row who killed 2 people at 13 years old for $5 ~ Ronald Lee Sanford

Life expectancy continues to rise in most of the rest of the industrialized world, but in the United States it has dropped for three years in a row - for the first time in a century. As we'll see, American kids today are 55 percent more likely to die by the age of nineteen than children in the other rich countries that are members of the OECD, the club of industrialized nations. America now lags behind its peer countries in health care and high-school graduation rates while suffering greater violence, poverty and addiction. This dysfunction damages all Americans: it undermines our nation's competitiveness, especially as growing economies like China's are fueled by much larger populations and by rising education levels, and may erode the well-being of our society for decades to come. The losers are not just those at the bottom of society, but all of us. For America to be strong, we must strengthen all Americans. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Charlie followed where they were looking and stopped dead in her tracks. Other people walked around her, grumbling and grouchy. She was bumped several times and none of it mattered. Because past the row of seats in the center aisle, right there at her gate, stood Cole, holding a sign with a rainbow on it that said "Charlie".
His handsome face sported a charming smile, which made her laugh and start crying like a total girl. ~ Jennifer Kacey

When there's a great horror movie, people are like, 'Horror's back!' And when there's a series of not so good ones, 'Horror's dead.' I think it's all about the quality. When there are one or two good horror movies in a row, people come out interested again. ~ Jason Blum

Auschwitz?! That is a name I had heard before. There is not much time for thinking. It had been raining here not so long ago. The asphalt of the wet, wide platform reflects the light of the high lighting-poles. The row of armed SS men competes in howling with their dogs they hold on leashes ~ Azriel Feuerstein

That's the first time he had started from the front row in a Grand Prix, having done so in Canada earlier this year. ~ Murray Walker

She was feeling reckless; nothing that she did mattered. She walked to the window and twitched the curtain apart. There were the stars pricked in little holes in the blue-black sky. There was a row of chimney-pots against the sky. Then the stars. Inscrutable, eternal, indifferent - those were the words; the right words. But I don't feel it, she said, looking at the stars. So why pretend to? What they're really like, she thought, screwing up her eyes to look at them, is little bits of frosty steel. And the moon - there it was - is a polished dish-cover. But she felt nothing, even when she had reduced moon and stars to that. ~ Virginia Woolf

Whoever said that love hurts was wrong. Love is excruciating, especially when you can feel it slipping through your fingers and there is nothing you can do about it. Like someone was playing tug-of-war with my limbs, ripping to shreds whatever was left behind. What it would feel like when love was lost ... I wouldn't survive that ~ Julie Hockley

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them. ~ Mark Lawrence

MY GAZELLES ARE ALL IN ROW, (But they run off a lot)
Kego O'Grady ~ Steve Merrick

Beyond that row was a double row of trees. Sam headed in that direction, Dad on her heels.
"Be careful of snakes."
That stopped her in her tracks. She could deal with a snarling dog. A hissing cat. Even a spitting ferret like her cousin Chris had, but she had the biggest fear if snakes. It didn't matter if it was a grass snake or a supposedly good snake that ate the poisonous snakes. In Sam's opinion, the only good snake was a dead snake. Dead and chopped up into little, itty, bitty pieces.

~From "Samantha Sanderson On the Scene ~ Robin Caroll

We don't want to be our own niche. We're filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row are we going to talk about the fact that we make films and we are women? Enough already. ~ Nancy Meyers

He could start a row in an empty house. ~ Alex Ferguson

Destiny awaits, a darkness latent in the texture of the summer wind. Destiny will betray you, crush your ideals, deliver you into the same detestable Bürgerlichkeit as our father, sucking at his pipe on Sunday strolls after church past the row houses by the river - dress you in the gray uniform of another family man, and without a whimper you will serve out your time, fly from pain to duty, from joy to work, from commitment to neutrality. Destiny does all this to you. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Here in the Great Lakes region, a fourth year in a row of declining water levels has caused millions of dollars in losses for shipping companies, marinas and other businesses and prompted further restrictions on future water withdrawals for expanding suburbs. "A lot of people just can't believe that we may be running out of water, living this close to the Great Lakes," said Sarah Nerenberg, a water engineer with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, which conducted the study on shortages. ~ Timothy Egan

Chinese whisper games will start, where one woman will nod at a young dancing girl, asking a question that is passed down the row from one woman to another, before a response comes back up the line in the same manner. These women are in the business of finding wives for their sons and they offer up occasional commentary on the performance before them.
"Not so pretty. Her sister is better."
"That poor one will have a hard time, yes. The dark skin - she is already an old woman. She will have to wait, yes."
Information about the girl's family's honor, purity, and place in society is also exchanged ~ Jenny Nordberg

It always surprises me after a family row to find that the world outdoors has remained the same. While the passions and feelings that accumulate like noxious gases inside a house seem to condense and cling to the walls and ceilings like old smoke the out-of-doors is different. The landscape seems incapable of accumulating human radiation. Perhaps the wind blows anger away. ~ Alan Bradley

Because when we think about the real facts: 44 million Americans without health insurance, millions without jobs, a 50-year high on mortgage foreclosures, an historic high the third year in a row on personal bankruptcies. ~ Chaka Fattah

It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything -- room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky . I had lost a head and gained a world. ~ Douglas Harding

Questions about happiness generally assume that we know what a happy life looks like. Happiness is often described as the result of having a great many ducks lined up in a row - spouse, offspring, private property, erotic experiences - even though a millisecond of reflection will bring to mind countless people who have all those things and are still miserable. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Our capitol punishment system is haunted by the demon of error- error in determining guilt, error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die ... The legislation couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. I won't stand for it. I had to act ... I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates. ~ George Ryan

The thing about luck is that it's like a fever. You can take fever meds and lie in bed and drink chicken broth and sleep seventeen hours in a row, but basically your fever will break when it wants to break. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. What Ye disliked most was seeing the waves that slowly crawled across the display, a visual record of the meaningless noise Red Coast picked up from space. Ye felt this interminable wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future, and in the middle only the ups and downs of random chance - without life, without pattern, the peaks and valleys at different heights like uneven grains of sand, the whole curve like a one-dimensional desert made of all the grains of sand lined up in a row, lonely, desolate, so long that it was intolerable. You could follow it and go forward or backward as long as you liked, but you'd never find the end. ~ Liu Cixin

No club that wins a pennant once is an outstanding club. One which bunches two pennants is a good club. But a team which can win three in a row really achieves greatness. ~ John McGraw

The dead lay in a row in the middle of the hall. ~ J.K. Rowling

The politics of transgender identity are really complicated. And the debate over how much of gender is biological and how much of it is socially constructed is a very complex debate. ~ Jess Row

When I was about 17, I had a row with my mother and left home for six months, renting a flat and working as a waitress for a while. I learnt you could double your earnings if you gave good, cheerful service. It taught me that in any job you can improve your lot. ~ Anne Robinson

I don't care about Hernandez." Grace paused and looked into his coal black eyes. "I care about you." "What does that mean?" "It means - " She paused and smiled to herself. "It means we're hoeing a long row of summer cotton." She smiled to herself and thought of Richard Garza. "You and I. Andrés Segovia and Grace Delgado. Lots of weeds, Andrés. And we're hoeing. We're hoeing as fast as we can. And if we don't get the roots, then the weeds will grow back. And all our work will be for nothing. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

One wrong move, one bad rumor, one mistake, and it's social death row. I'm the latest to be sentenced. Move out of the way, everyone. Dead girl walking.
-Riley ~ Dawn Klehr

You can't get bored of winning. You can win 10 games in a row but you keep the same will to snatch the 11th. You always need more. ~ Zinedine Zidane

But that's the thing about being the girl who's spent years convincing the world she's not afraid of anything: At some point, someone is going to find out you're afraid of everything. ~ Ally Carter