Daniel’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

"No," he said, “that's not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised.
We have a right to pain."
THIS BOOK IS CRUSHING MY SOUL

"If you're being honest, why not say you are enjoying this beating you're giving yourself? That would be the truth. Why not be just what you are and do just what you do?" Cal sat in shock from this thought. Enjoying? Of course. By whipping himself he protected himself against whipping by someone else.

"You're growing up. Maybe that's it," he said softly. "Sometimes I think the world tests us most sharply then, and we turn inward and watch ourselves with horror.”

“What did he do when she left?"
"He died," said Lee.
"He walked around but he was dead. And only recently has he come half to life again."

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. We should try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

“You don't believe I brought you the letter because I don't want your money. You don't believe I loved you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures, you don't believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think more than that, you're sure, that's all there is.”

"I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can't understand. You don't hate their evil. You hate the good in them you can't get at.”

“Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience."

"You have no love."
"I had.. enough to kill me."

“I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar, if he is financially fortunate.”