On 30, Aging, Good, Evil, Steinbeck, and Life
Joshua Blankenship picked this excellent Steinbeck quote in reflection of his own 30th birthday (read the whole passage). I also thought it rather poignant in light of the recent celebrity deaths, whose lives our culture spends a lot of time examining.
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. 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 to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden