I came across this quote from John Steinbeck today. I’ve never liked a word of Steinbeck. No, let me rephrase. I despise Steinbeck. His novels — not fun reads. They don’t stir deep emotion in me. They don’t make me think. Saying that — this quote made me smile very big.
“There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-improtance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you – of kindness and consideration and respect – not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”
kerryfaler.blog 
I love thos quote. I also loved Of Mice and Men. It made me ugly cry in the parking lot of Drug Emporium after buying a copy of the book and the Cliff’s Notes from Betty’s Books. I had to read the book for a test at school, and had procrastinated horribly. (I know, shocking. Me, procrastinate??) My Mom agreed to let me get the Cliffs Notes to study after finishing the book that afternoon. While she shopped in Drug Emporium, I cheated and read the Cliff’s Notes first. When she got in the car and I was ugly crying, she knew I had at the least skimmed the book and read the end.
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Ah, Betty’s Books! We read Of Mice and Men in 9th grade, when I discovered Shakespeare and Dickens and Hemingway. I found it very masculine and gritty in a way I didn’t like. Hemingway was my favorite. He wrote in the masculine voice like no one else. He owned that. Steinbeck didn’t do it for me. And cry? Man, his short story “Hills Like White Elephants.” The best short story ever. Brilliant. The man was brilliant. In college, one professor let me teach that story and “The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufock,” my other great literary love. Those were two great days.
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