Tommy Boyd

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, Winter of Our Discontent

“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.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“When Pharaoh had a dream he called in the experts and they told him how it was and how it would be in the kingdom, and that was right because he was the kingdom. When some of us have a dream, we take it to an expert and he tells us how it is in the country of ourselves. I had a dream that didn’t need an expert. Like most modern people, I don’t believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.”
― John Steinbeck, Winter of Our Discontent

“He was a kind of high ametuer ancestor man and I’ve always noticed that ancestor people usually lack the qualities of the ones they celebrate. My father was a gentle, well-informed, ill-advised, sometimes brilliant fool. Singlehanded he lost the land, money, prestige, and future; in fact he lost nearly everything Allens and Hawleys had accumulated over several hundred years, lost everything but the names–which was all my father was interested in anyway. Father used to give me what he called “heritage lessons.” That’s why I know so much about the old boys. Maybe that’s also why I’m a clerk in a Sicilian grocery on a block Hawleys used to own.”
― John Steinbeck, Winter of Our Discontent