East of Eden.

STEINBECK: A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

SRONCE: Funny. So true. Thanks for letting me come over.

STEINBECK: I have owed you this letter for a very long time - but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.


SRONCE: Thank you. Awww. From way back then! God. You are so much more... relaxed now.

STEINBECK: You should passionately believe in the perfectibility of man.

SRONCE: I believe.

STEINBECK: Hmmm.

SRONCE: I think I have to move.


STEINBECK: I've lived in a good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

SRONCE: I'm just so...it's just so...

STEINBECK: If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.

SRONCE: Thanks.

STEINBECK: It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.


SRONCE: That's simply never worked for me.

STEINBECK: It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

SRONCE: Oh God.

STEINBECK: YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNN. Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.

SRONCE: Yucatan Peninsula...

STEINBECK: Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

SRONCE: We men never change.

STEINBECK: Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

SRONCE: I just want to go swimming for a really long time...swim...swim some more. And then ---> just keep on swimming. Or. I want to go HERE.
Forever.

STEINBECK: No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

SRONCE: What do you suppose then? That I want a tuna melt!

STEINBECK: No one wants advice - only corroboration.

SRONCE: Sorry. God. What the hell is my problem.

STEINBECK: One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

SRONCE: I can't wait to read what you wrote.


SRONCE: Wait? Secretariat's nail! Is it in there?

STEINBECK: No.

SRONCE: Ha ha!

STEINBECK: One man was so mad at me (for that) that he ended a letter: "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."

SRONCE: Ahhaa! Haahaha!! Hhehhhhhahhha!!!

Anyway. I laughed and laughed. We stayed up all night - watched Sleepy Hollow, took turns telling fantastically indulgent versions of our favorite scary story, and then decided on early morning delivery.

STEINBECK: So - in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee...


STEINBECK: ... and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.