How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight, perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. (1.1.1)
Steinbeck has apparently always had an irresistible urge to travel and be out there learning. Although he doesn't specifically mention writing, his thirst to explore is definitely about his projects and mission as a writer.
Quote #2
My plan was clear, concise, and reasonable, I think. For many years I have traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers. But more than this, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is criminal. My memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years. (1.2.1)
There you have it: this whole writing project is about making sure Steinbeck has legit American author status—and how can you have that without having explored America recently? That's Steinbeck's perspective, at least, so that's why he's hitting the road.
Quote #3
I wondered how in hell I'd got myself mixed up in a project that couldn't be carried out. It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing. So it was now, as I looked at the bright-colored projection of monster America. (2.1.31)
Steinbeck definitely dips into reflections about writing and authorship throughout the story, and this is just one example of his musings on the subject. There's some good advice in here, Shmoopers—sometimes you just have to take writing a bite at a time until you get to a whole product.
Quote #4
Sunday, January 29, 1961. Yes, Joseph Addison, I hear and I will obey within Reason, for it appears that the Curiosity you speak of has in no Way abated. I have found many Readers more interested in what I wear than in what I think, more avid to know how I do it than in what I do. In regarding my Work, some Readers profess greater Feeling for what it makes than for what it says. Since a Suggestion from the Master is a Command not unlike Holy Writ, I shall digress and comply at the same Time. (2.1.122)
Because he admires Joseph Addison, who thought it was important to come out with who you are as an author right off the bat, Steinbeck decides to follow suit and give us some deets about who he is. The thing is, he doesn't actually tell us anything important about who he is inside. It's primarily about how he looks, how tall he is in comparison to other family members—that kind of stuff. But hey, it's what he thinks the public wants to know, we guess.
Quote #5
Thus far with Addison's injunction, but my Reader has me back in that New Hampshire picnic place. As I sat there fingering the first volume of The Spectator and considering how the mind usually does two things at once that it knows about and probably several it doesn't, a luxurious car drove in and a rather stout and bedizened woman released a rather stout and bedizened Pomeranian of the female persuasion. (2.1.125)
Steinbeck is really good at toggling from lofty and fancy-sounding thoughts to pretty ridiculous topics, and this is a prime example. And so, all his deep thoughts about writing and keeping himself honest and transparent as an author give way to the tyranny of a "bedizened Pomeranian."
Quote #6
On the long journey doubts were often my companions. I've always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself. (2.3.61)
Now we're back to pretty insightful musings about writing and how an author can shape the "truth" that s/he presents to readers. Of course, we know that Steinbeck did not stick to the literal truth as often as people might have originally assumed when he wrote Travels with Charley, and this little "Well, what is truth anyway?" speech might be a little wink in that direction, no?
Quote #7
Joe and I flew home to America in the same plane, and on the way he told me about Prague, and his Prague had no relation to the city I had seen and heard. It just wasn't the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both pretty good observers by any standard, and we brought home two cities, two truths. For this reason I cannot commend this account as an America that you will find. So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world. (2.3.62)
Of course, John, we might also find a different America because you made a lot of what you encountered up, but sure—the larger point stands: two different people on the same trip will likely have completely different experiences. So, again, truth is relative, according to Steinbeck.
Quote #8
So it went on—a profession older than writing and one that will probably survive when the written word has disappeared. And all the sterile wonders of movies and television and radio will fail to wipe it out—a living man in communication with a living audience. (3.3.109)
While he was camping out, Steinbeck meets an actor who told him a lot about his life in the theater and "the profession." Apparently, Steinbeck thinks that his kind of art will outlast written expression, even with film and TV taking over.
Quote #9
The road surface tore viciously at my tires and made Rocinante's overloaded springs cry with anguish. What a place for a colony of troglodytes, or better, of trolls. And here's an odd thing. Just as I felt unwanted in this land, so do I feel a reluctance in writing about it. (3.4.6)
Steinbeck reflects that, because he was uncomfortable while driving through the Bad Lands (at least, at first), it's hard for him to even write about his observations from that time. Some authors gravitate toward what makes them uncomfortable (and hey, if Steinbeck's nuke references are any indication, he's perhaps one of them), but there's something about feeling unwelcome in a place that shuts down Steinbeck's writerly impulses.
Quote #10
Writers facing the problem of Texas find themselves floundering in generalities, and I am no exception. Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. (4.1.3)
Steinbeck spends a truly remarkable amount of time talking about Texas. Compared to other places, it gets a lot of airtime. Despite saying that he can only talk in generalities, he actually gives us a fair amount of historical detail. But that said, the basic point is that Texas is so huge (both geographically and, it seems, as an idea) that it's hard for any writer to wrap his or her head around it.