"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)

"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)

"It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself."
— 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

"The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

"
— William Saroyan (My Heart's in the Highlands)

"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)

"The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops."
— 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

"The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited."
— 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: A Comedy in Three Acts)

"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)

"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

"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: A Comedy in Three Acts)

"You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right."
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"Writing is the hardest way of earning a living with the possible exception of wrestling alligators."
— William Saroyan

"I care so much about everything that I care about nothing"
— William Saroyan (My Heart's in the Highlands)

"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)

"Remember that every man is a variation of yourself"
— William Saroyan

"Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?"
— William Saroyan

"People are people. Don't be afraid of them."
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!"
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it."
— William Saroyan

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."
— 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 (My Heart's in the Highlands)

"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)

"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)

"What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?"
— William Saroyan (Madness in the Family)

"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

"When Ulysses saw his brother, a wonderful thing happened to his face. All the terror left his eyes, because now he was hom"
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"Future?" Homer said. He was a little embarrassed because all his life, from day to day, he had been busy mapping out a future, even if it was only a future for the next day. "Well," he said, "I don't know for sure, but I guess I'd like to be somebody some day."
— William Saroyan (The 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 (The Human Comedy)

"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 (The Human Comedy)

"I watch the growth of spirit in the children who come to my class."
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners…I want my children to be people– each one separate– each one special– each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others"
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"...he was under the impression that he belonged wherever there was something interesting to see"
— William Saroyan (The Human Comedy)

"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

"Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.
Now what?

"
— William Saroyan

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

"
— William Saroyan

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

"All things lie dark in possibility

"
— William Saroyan

"Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite,

and many may achieve genius only through play
"
— William Saroyan

"I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death.

"
— William Saroyan

"You write a hit play the same way you write a flop"
— William Saroyan

"All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.

"
— William Saroyan (My Heart's in the Highlands)

"The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself,

although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun,

the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.

"
— William Saroyan (My Heart's in the Highlands)