"I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession"
About this Quote
Steinbeck refuses the costume of the “grateful artist,” that polite little creature trained to accept crumbs and call them cake. The line snaps with theatrical self-awareness: he knows exactly how society prefers its writers - humble, lucky, faintly embarrassed to take up space. By choosing “mouse” and “lion,” he turns a social expectation into a bestiary, making deference feel not just undesirable but faintly humiliating. “Squeak” is perfect: it’s the sound of minimal presence, a voice designed not to disturb the room.
The verb “impelled” matters. This isn’t chest-thumping for its own sake; it’s pressure, almost moral force. Steinbeck frames pride not as vanity but as an ethical stance, a refusal to apologize for the labor of meaning-making. That’s the subtext: writing isn’t a hobbyists’ parlor trick, it’s a profession with obligations - to craft, to readers, to truth as he understood it. The “roar” is a claim to authority, but also a defense mechanism against a culture that alternates between romanticizing artists and treating them as decorative.
Contextually, Steinbeck spent his career caught between mass popularity and elite suspicion, praised as a voice of “the people” while being sneered at as insufficiently refined. The quote reads like a rebuttal to that whole arrangement. He won’t perform gratitude to critics, patrons, or gatekeepers. He’ll stand up as a worker of words and insist the work deserves respect, not indulgence.
The verb “impelled” matters. This isn’t chest-thumping for its own sake; it’s pressure, almost moral force. Steinbeck frames pride not as vanity but as an ethical stance, a refusal to apologize for the labor of meaning-making. That’s the subtext: writing isn’t a hobbyists’ parlor trick, it’s a profession with obligations - to craft, to readers, to truth as he understood it. The “roar” is a claim to authority, but also a defense mechanism against a culture that alternates between romanticizing artists and treating them as decorative.
Contextually, Steinbeck spent his career caught between mass popularity and elite suspicion, praised as a voice of “the people” while being sneered at as insufficiently refined. The quote reads like a rebuttal to that whole arrangement. He won’t perform gratitude to critics, patrons, or gatekeepers. He’ll stand up as a worker of words and insist the work deserves respect, not indulgence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Pride |
|---|---|
| Source | John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech (Nobel Lecture), 1962. |
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