A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slippe… - John Steinbeck

There were frogs all right, thousands of them. Their voices beat the night, they boomed and barked and croaked and rattled. They sang to the stars, to the waning moon, to the waving grasses. They bellowed long songs and challenges.

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man — if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could — and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin]