ali’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

Every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing. [...] We are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have?

The whole valley, the whole West was that way. It was a time when the past had lost its sweetness and its sap. You'd go a long road before you'd find a man, and he very old, who wished to bring back a golden past. Men were notched and comfortable in the present, hard and unfruitful as it was, but only as a doorstep into a fantastic future.