A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hea… - John Steinbeck

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A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

John Steinbeck

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storytelling

English

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About John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968) was an American writer. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, his works include the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1940), both of which examine the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Great Depression.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: Jeffery Ernest Steinbeck

Alternative Names: John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. • John Ernst Steinbeck • John Ernest Steinbeck • John Ernst Steinbeck Jr • Steinbeck

All quotes from John Steinbeck Similar Quotes by other Originators

Shorter versions of this quote

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

Originators like John Steinbeck:

William Faulkner Ursula K. Le Guin Norman Mailer E. M. Forster Mark Twain

Additional quotes by John Steinbeck

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.

Nearly everybody has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.

That was a time when a man had the right to be burried by his own son an' a son had the right to burry his own father.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what h… - John Steinbeck

About John Steinbeck

Also Known As

Shorter versions of this quote

Additional quotes by John Steinbeck