Protima’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

“Maybe it’s true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous.”

“You had to crave something to be dishonest.”

“It’s hard to give people things—I guess it’s harder to be given things, though.”

“I’m my own. I don’t have to be you.”

“And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.”

“In their millions the frog songs seemed to have a beat and a cadence, and perhaps it is the ears’ function to do this just as it is the eyes’ business to make stars twinkle.”

“I don’t want them to be sad. I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”

“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.”

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

“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 […] A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil?”