Marte’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

(Abra:) «Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good.»

(Lee:) «And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?»

(Lee to Adam:) «Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atomized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses—the whole world over his fence.»

The train delivered quite a crowd for Salinas, returning relatives home for Thanksgiving, their hands entangled in cartons and gift-wrapped paper boxes.

One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.

The split second has been growing more and more important to us.

He drove south from King City over the county road, *through the gathering forces of spring*, and the meadowlarks flew ahead, bubbling melody from the fence wires.

(Adam to Cal:) «He was a tough old man. And now I know what he meant. I’m the same as my father was. He didn’t allow me to be a person, and I haven’t seen my sons as people. That’s what Samuel meant.»

«My father made a mold and forced me into it,» Adam said. «I was a bad casting but I couldn’t be remelted. Nobody can be remelted. And so I remained a bad casting.»

(Lee to Cal:) «Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother.»

And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. 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.