William Saroyan > Quotes

“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and 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

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
― William Saroyan, The Time Of Your Life

“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.”
― William Saroyan

“Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.”
― William Saroyan

“She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn't like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn't stop, and she didn't like that at all.”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family

“I care so much about everything that I care about nothing”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“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

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."
”
― William Saroyan

“Remember that every man is a variation of yourself”
― William Saroyan

“What do you mean, what's the matter with him? Nothing's the matter with him, everything's the matter with him, the same as it is with everybody else. He's just fine. He gets overwhelmed now and then, and he doesn't know how to say what he feels or means, so he cries and runs off a little, trying to find out where to go, for God's sake. Where can you go?”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family

“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

“The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.”
― William Saroyan

“You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.”
― William Saroyan, Human Comedy

“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, Madness in the Family

“In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed...In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
― William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life

“Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family

“I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family

“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”
― William Saroyan

“People are people. Don't be afraid of them.”
― William Saroyan, Human Comedy

“Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.”
― William Saroyan, Human Comedy

“I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.”
― William Saroyan

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”
― William Saroyan

“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.”
― William Saroyan

“One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.”
― William Saroyan, One Day in the Afternoon of the World

“It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.”
― William Saroyan

“In the time of your life, live---so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for andy life your life touches.”
― William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life

“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, Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever

“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, My Heart's in the Highlands

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and 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

“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, My Heart's in the Highlands

“I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.”
― William Saroyan, Human Comedy

“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, Human Comedy

“I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!”
― William Saroyan, Human Comedy

“Writing is the hardest way of earning a living with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.”
― 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, Madness in the Family

“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, Madness in the Family

“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, Madness in the Family

“The order I found was the order of disorder”
― 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, Places Where I've Done Time

“What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.”
― William Saroyan

“Live, for this is the time of your life.”
― William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life

“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.”
― 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

“We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.”
― 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

“Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.”
― 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

“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, Human Comedy