Emily Eich’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

"You've got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn't even be wondering if you didn't have it. Don't you dare take the lazy way. Its too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it Now-look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother."

take a shot every time male author writes about the development of a female character by remarking on the size of her breasts

whoops sorry i’m drunk now

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that 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.”

yall im dying. trying so hard to finish this book because it is so excellent… but also i can only read about men and cars and trains and land for so long

john steinbeck im begging you to write about a woman please

“And I am a man...that is a very important thing. Maybe even more important than a star. This is not theology, I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.”

Lee discussing the Hebrew writings of Genesis with Samuel is some of the most truthful and beautiful writing I’ve read in my life. Wow!

“The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.”

“It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.”