Quotes
- "And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between. If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Prologue - "Sometimes it rose to an aching chord that caught the throat, saying this is safety, this is warmth, this is the Whole."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 1 - "But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods both."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 2 - "there were more illusions than realities."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 2 - "A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities--never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 3 - "For his dream of the future was real and never to be destroyed, and he had said, 'I will go,' and that made a real thing too. To determine to go and to say it was to be halfway there."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 4 - "This pearl has become my soul... If I give it up, I shall lose my soul."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 5 - "And then Kino's brain cleared from its red concentration and he knew the sound--the keening, moaning, rising hysterical cry from the little cave in the side of the stone mountain, the cry of death."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 6 - "removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side; that there was almost a magical protection about them."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 6 - "And the music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared."
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl, Chapter 6
