How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid. (2.3.2)
In Steinbeck's view, even things that you know aren't real can be pretty scary—apparently because, even if you "know" they aren't there, they still might be there and, if so, you'll be defenseless against them. Really, this is just an example of how the mind can spiral in isolation, right?
Quote #2
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)
As we've already discussed elsewhere, Steinbeck played a bit fast and loose with the truth in this "travelogue," and his musings about truth (and whether it's possible to convey and embody it in writing) might represent a wink wink moment, a kind of nudge toward not really thinking about what Steinbeck writes in terms of strict notions of truth and fiction.
Quote #3
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)
Again, we've definitely covered this general topic elsewhere (and this specific quote in "Literature and Writing"), but basically truth is kind of a relative, situational, subjective thing for Steinbeck, and he just doesn't think that two people can necessarily come up with a consistent "truth" about a place. That said, it doesn't mean someone is lying or anything—different people just have different experiences at different times.
Quote #4
It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better. But it is true that we have exchanged corpulence for starvation, and either one will kill us. The lines of change are down. We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain. (2.5.53)
In addition to disavowing any ability to convey the truth of a place or event, Steinbeck basically says it's impossible to even know the truth behind certain things. Real power and wisdom, he suggests, comes from just admitting that you don't know everything. Hey, we appreciate that—because admitting you don't know is the first step toward learning, right?
Quote #5
He drove ahead of me in the jeep and helped me find a level place in the pine grove. And after dark he came into Rocinante and admired her facilities and we drank some whisky together and had a nice visit and told each other a few lies. (2.5.79)
Steinbeck makes it sound like telling "a few lies" is just part of norming bonding behavior between strangers. Yes, as long as you're not in a courtroom or a police station, and those strangers aren't lawyers or policemen...
Quote #6
And I found with joy that the fact of Fargo had in no way disturbed my mind's picture of it. I could still think of Fargo as I always had—blizzard-riven, heat blasted, dust-raddled. I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger. (3.3.10)
Unfortunately, Steinbeck got a not-so-nice surprise when he finally got to visit Fargo, ND, and discovered it wasn't really like his childhood fantasies of the place. However, since he has that nifty belief in the power of fiction and the relative uselessness of truth, you probably won't be surprised to hear that he comforted himself by just continuing to imagine Fargo the way he always had, regardless of what he actually saw and experienced.
Quote #7
For myself, I try to keep the line open even for things I can't understand or explain, but it is difficult in this frightened time. At this moment in North Dakota I had a reluctance to drive on that amounted to fear. (3.4.2)
Okay, good—at least now we know Steinbeck is human because he admits he's scared of what he can't understand or explain. This only seems natural, right? We like people who own up to when they don't know about something—and who are open to learning about such things, even when they're scary.
Quote #8
And there is another monolithic tale which never changes. Two prospectors in partnership discover a mine of preternatural richness—of gold or diamonds or rubies. […] Sometimes in the story the survivor dies after leaving directions with his rescuers, or again he is nursed back to strength. Then a well-equipped party sets out to find the treasure, and it can never be found again. That is the invariable end of the story—it is never found again. I have heard this story many times, and it never changes. There is nourishment in the desert for myth, but myth must somewhere have its roots in reality. (3.12.20)
Steinbeck is relaying a yarn that he's heard often over the years. Even though he seems to doubt that it's all true, he suspect that there are "roots in reality." Hey, that's kind of like this story. Sure, he might have gotten some of his dates flubbed and made dialogue up, but there are probably some "roots in reality" in a lot of his interactions and observations about the country, right?
Quote #9
But if there is indeed an American image built of truth rather than reflecting either hostility or wishful thinking, what is this image? What does it look like? What does it do? If the same song, the same joke, the same style sweeps through all parts of the country at once, it must be that all Americans are alike in something. (4.2.3)
Given that Steinbeck set out on this whole trip to try to figure out what America is, or was, it's not really surprising that he muses about what it means to try to describe one "true" America when everything (and everyone) within her borders is so different. His argument seems to be that if a song, joke, or style can have broad national appeal, there must be something that unites us—he just can't quite pinpoint what it is.
Quote #10
I knew, as everyone knows, the true but incomplete statement of the problem—that an original sin of the fathers was being visited on the children of succeeding generations. I have many Southern friends, both Negro and white, many of them of superb minds and characters, and often, when not the problem but the mere suggestion of the Negro-white subject has come up, I have seen and felt them go into a room of experience into which I cannot enter. (4.2.5)
Here, it seems that the "truth" of racial inequality and its impact isn't really accessible to Steinbeck, since he hasn't lived in a context shaped by that issue. As a northerner, he believes he is barred from that kind of understanding.