Cannery Row Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Cannery Row.

Man and the Natural World Quotes

Western Biological deals in strange and beautiful wares. It sells the lovely animals of the sea, the sponges, tunicates, anemones, the stars and buttlestars, and sun stars, the bivalves [. . .] You...

Spirituality Quotes

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "...

Wealth Quotes

What [Lee Chong] did with his money, no one ever knew. Perhaps he didn't get it. Maybe his wealth was entirely in unpaid bills. But he lived well and had the respect of all his neighbors (1.3)

Home Quotes

[Dora] made herself respected by the intelligent, the learned, and the kind. And by the same token she is hated by the twisted and lascivious sisterhood of married spinsters whose husbands respect...

Happiness Quotes

What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step ove...

Visions of Monterey Quotes

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream (0.1)

Writing Quotes

The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails in the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardi...

Community Quotes

[Lee Chong] trusted his clients until further trust became ridiculous. Sometimes he made business errors, but even these he turned to advantage in good will if in no other way (1.4)