Saroyan William Quotes & Sayings

The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith. — William, Saroyan

Kids are always the only future the human race has. — William, Saroyan

Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes. — William, Saroyan

Nothing good ever ends. — William, Saroyan

I saw rich beggars and poor beggars, proud beggars and humble beggars, fat beggars and thin beggars, healthy beggars and sick beggars, whole beggars and crippled beggars, wise beggars and stupid beggars. I saw amateur beggars and professional beggars. A professional beggar is a beggar who begs for a living. — William, Saroyan

Remember that in the midst of that which is most tragic there is always the comic and in the midst that which is most evil there is always much good. — William, Saroyan

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. — William, Saroyan

You know the look: genius gone to pot, and ready to join the Communist Party — William, Saroyan

It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself. — William, Saroyan

What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know? — William, Saroyan

Love doesn't have to be perfect. Even perfect, it is still the best thing there is, for the simple reason that it is the most common and constant truth of all, of all life, all law and order, the very thing which holds everything together, which permits everything to move along in time and be its wonderful or ordinary self. — William, Saroyan

Jack Benny had style from the beginning. He stood straight and walked kind of sideways as if he were being gently shoved by a touch of genius. — William, Saroyan

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes. — William, Saroyan

I wanted to know her the way a bee wants to know a great bright flower. — William, Saroyan

Americans still believe they are cut out to be successful-in everything: love, love-making, luck, luck-giving, money-making, sense-making, cancer-avoiding, clothes-wearing, car-driving, and so on. — William, Saroyan

I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth. — William, Saroyan

Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: "You just change your attitude now please, young man." This transformation in kids - from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream - is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market. — William, Saroyan

This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said. — William, Saroyan

As for the matter of what we may expect from one another, that is indeed something we are eager to learn - all of us, all our lives, but I wonder, do we ever learn, do we ever really find out? — William, Saroyan

He was under the impression that he belonged wherever there was something interesting to see. — William, Saroyan

The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh? — William, Saroyan

No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend,and there are many more of these than one would suspect. — William, Saroyan

The people you hate, well, this is the question about such people: why do you hate them? — William, Saroyan

The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably. — William, Saroyan

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia. — William, Saroyan

Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck. — William, Saroyan

The idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better. — William, Saroyan

Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength. — William, Saroyan

A poverty-stricken nation with a great art is a greater nation than a wealthy nation with a poverty-stricken art. — William, Saroyan

I'm not the kind of guy to knock at a door and then when the door is opened not go in. — William, Saroyan

There is no such thing as a soldier. I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign. — William, Saroyan

All of the sudden," he said, "I feel different
not like I ever felt before. Even when Papa died I didn't feel this way. In two days everything is changed. I'm lonely and I don't now what I'm lonely for — William, Saroyan

Be grateful for yourself ... be thankful. — William, Saroyan

I visualized myself at Norma's house, stretched out on her couch, my eyes closed, and she at bthe paino playing a powerful movement from some Symphony in D major by Beethoven, by Brahms, by Sibelius, by Tschaikowsky, by anybody, by Thomas Wolfe, by Ernest Hemmingway, by William Saroyan, by Jack Kerouac, by George Apostolos, by Sebastian the Prince, by Love, by Earth, by Fire, by Water, by All, Everything, Love you and I, me myself, egotist, Earth, Fire, a mad and wild concoction of all Life, and of the all-embracing All. — Jack Kerouac

Zombies have got to do a lot of hanging around together
weaklings, liars, cheaters. Everybody respects them these days, everybody thinks that if they don't respect them it means they're against civil liberties or something, but I can only sympathize with them a little, but only a little; I can't respect them, they bore me
their everlasting bawling about their tricky little sadnesses and deprivations of childhood bore me. You've introduced me to some of the people you know. I don't dislike any of them, but I really can't pretend I believe in any of them, or that they don't bore me. And in being critical of them of course I'm being critical of you, too, at least for having them as friends. There are other people around, too, you know, not just the ones who start by giving up, and then just hang around to see what giving up leads to. It leads to being a zombie of one sort or another. — William, Saroyan

You live and die according to what goes on in yourself, which no one else can even begin to know, not even father, mother, wife, son, or daughter. — William, Saroyan

If you're alive, you can't be bored in San Francisco. If you're not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life ... San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure. It is a city in which the spirit can know refreshment every day. — William, Saroyan

I want time in which to walk quietly over the earth, among uncrazed men. I want time in which to build a house, inhabit it, create a past with meaning. I want time in which to seek and find love. I want time. I want to be unhurried, uncaught. I want time in which to sleep and waken, in which to dream the truth of my being on earth. Time. — William, Saroyan

I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich. — William, Saroyan

Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. — William, Saroyan

We get very little wisdom from success, you know. — William, Saroyan

Every artist is in everything he creates, and indeed if the truth is told, every person is in his life, in his work, whatever his work may be, and this is visible in his face, figure, stance, movement, and totality. — William, Saroyan

Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful. — William, Saroyan

There's a pretty woman for ever lucky man in the world: every man in the world is a lucky man if he only knew it, so why waste time? — William, Saroyan

To Armenians, half Armenians, quarter Armenians, and one-eight Armenians.
Sixteen and thirty-second Armenians, and other winners, are likelier to be happy with a useful book — William, Saroyan

There is no real freedom for the man who is in so much of a hurry that he is annoyed by the human race and by the hot glaring afternoon sun. — William, Saroyan

You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right. — William, Saroyan

Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective. The truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it. — William, Saroyan

What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace. — William, Saroyan

All writers are discontent. That's because they're aware of a potential and believe they're not reaching it. — William, Saroyan

Doctors don't know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in the spirit. — William, Saroyan

I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful. — William, Saroyan

Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't. — William, Saroyan

Two years ago your father died, Ulysses. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. — William, Saroyan

Standing at the edge of our city, a man could feel that we had made this place of streets and dwellings in the stillness of the desert, and that we had done a brave thing ... Or a man could feel that we had made this city in the desert and that it was a fake thing and that our lives were empty lives, and that we were the contemporaries of the jack rabbits. — William, Saroyan

It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books. — William, Saroyan

Morning is best when it begins with the last hours of night ... Enough of culture's hours. I am a peasant. Enough of feasting. I want hunger. Enough of fat. I want muscle. Enough of pity. I want humor. Enough of vanity. I want pride. — William, Saroyan

What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America. — William, Saroyan

Now, what is food? Why is food so important? Why do human beings need so much of it - three times a day, every day, year after year? Why do they live on food instead of on something else? Wouldn't it be better if human beings didn't need food at all? Wouldn't it be better if they could live on air, for instance? Get stronger and bigger by breathing sea air, or the air of the mountains, or the forests, or the meadows, or the vineyards and orchards, the wheat fields, the gardens all over the world? Wouldn't that be a better way for men to stay alive?
(spoken by 10-year-old Aram Saroyan) — William, Saroyan

I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres ... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed. — William, Saroyan

Nobody, but nobody, is going to tell me I'm not the most. I am. I was the most when everybody else was struggling bitterly to become a little. — William, Saroyan

Once he saw a young girl with a small black satchel descend from a train, and she seemed so lonely and frightened that he wanted to shout to her and run down to her and smile and tell her, My name is Joe Silvera. I was born in this town, but I went away when I was seventeen and stayed away seven years. I've been back four months. I live across the street. I'm a painter. Come on up to my place and rest; I've got some wine.
All he did, though, was stare at her, and finally when she disappeared, walking down Tulare Street, he wanted very much, even then, to run down to the street and catch up with her; and a day later he wanted to look for her all over town; and a week later he wondered where she might be. — William, Saroyan

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters. — William, Saroyan

People is all everything is, all it has ever been, all it can ever be. — William, Saroyan

Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but every life shall one day end. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. — William, Saroyan

The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind. — William, Saroyan

The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed. — William, Saroyan

If I want to do anything, I want to speak a more universal language. — William, Saroyan

Be, beget, begone. — William, Saroyan

Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do useful things whenever it is possible or necessary to do them, we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared. Armenians are too vital to be permitted to throw themselves away in neutrality, comfort, well-being, satisfaction, and so on and so forth. — William, Saroyan

I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things. — William, Saroyan

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and there are so many ways for writing to be done. — William, Saroyan

I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little. — William, Saroyan

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. — William, Saroyan

I watch the growth of spirit in the children who come to my class. — William, Saroyan

If I have any desire at all, it is to show the brotherhood of man. — William, Saroyan

People are people. Don't be afraid of them. — William, Saroyan

My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country? Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there? The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass, the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there? The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking? Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there? — William, Saroyan

At the corner she looked suddenly far away and saw the street go straight out to the sky. She looked up to the sky and saw it go everywhere, and my, she thought, how large it is, what a large place it is. What a large world. So many different people, so many different places, close by and far away, people everywhere, places everywhere. What a fine place to be in. — William, Saroyan

He's finding out, he's doing all right, he'll go to school but nobody's going to teach him anything. — William, Saroyan

The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art - that is, the meaningful-real.
(The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)) — William, Saroyan

Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave. — William, Saroyan

In every house there ought to be an art table on which, one by one, things are placed, so that everybody in that house might look at the things very carefully, and see them.'
'What would you put on a table like that?'
'A leaf. A coin. A button. A stone. A small piece of torn newspaper. An apple. An egg. A pebble. A flower. A dead insect. A shoe.'
'Everybody's seen those things.'
'Of course. But nobody looks at them, and that's what art is. To look at familiar things as if they had never before been seen ... A necktie. A pocketknife ... a walnut. — William, Saroyan

The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too. — William, Saroyan

All comedians are people who really deeply consider the human experience not only a dirty trick perpetrated by a totally meaningless procedure of accidents, but an unbearable ordeal every day, which can be made tolerable only by mockery in one form or another. — William, Saroyan

He got up and stalked out of the house, slamming the screen door.
My mother explained.
He has a gentle heart, she said. It is simply that he is homesick and such a large man. — William, Saroyan

I have an idea that most of all he is running away from love, because it's too big and too demanding. He's running away from us
from you, from me, from his sister, from himself, too. Who wants to be himself, who wants to be so little, and so captured and limited? — William, Saroyan

The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business. — William, Saroyan

Don't tell me I'm sentimental, you sons of bitches. You are contemptible, your dishonesty is contemptible, your careful plodding with words, to keep them safely captured inside your silly little theories are contemptible, but I don't hate you, because each of you is a sad little pompous son of a bitch, with a chair at a university, and you are fighting bravely to seem to be somebody. — William, Saroyan

When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. — William, Saroyan

We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in. — William, Saroyan

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy. — William, Saroyan

I see life as one life at one time, so many millions simultaneously, all over the earth. — William, Saroyan

Give me something about bacteria. Give me something that won't make me feel so inferior — William, Saroyan

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy. — Jonathan Evison

I have never received a telephone call that justified the excitement and fuss of the electronics involved. If I can't see somebody I love, for instance, such as a daughter, or a son, I would rather receive a letter. — William, Saroyan

Of course if you like your kids, if you love them from the moment they begin, you yourself begin all over again, in them, with them, and so there is something more to the world again. — William, Saroyan

I can't decide for you whether or not you have got to write, but if anything in the world, war, or pestilence, or famine, or private hunger, or anything, can stop you from writing, then don't write ... because if anything can even begin to keep you from writing you aren't a writer and you'll be in a hell of a mess until you find out. If you are a writer, you'll still be in a hell of a mess, but you'll have better reasons. — William, Saroyan

I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me. — William, Saroyan

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself ... — William, Saroyan