Places Where I've Done Time Quotes

“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

“Stopping at hotels in the big cities of the world is a joy to a new traveler, and I must not forget this, for it is one of the delights of the human experience. The hotel one stops at in a new city doesn't have to be the best in town by any means. It can even be one of the worst, but being there, in that new city, is a beautiful thing. Everything is new, everything is different, everything is ready and right.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Going away has something to do with the search in general--for love, for the beautiful girl or woman who is to fulfill a man's truth and reality, for recognition, for acceptance, for work, for enthusiasm about the whole human experience, but most of all going away is a search for one's best self.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“One can seldom look at terrain and think of it, "This is France," for instance, but in looking at the landscape south of Nogales I had the feeling unmistakably. The land itself was Mexican. It was dry, sandy, rocky, hot, and heavy with many kinds of desert plants. It had repose, dignity, and a sense of the fierceness of survival--not just human survival, but all survival, animal, insect, bird, and plant. And then, when the people of Mexico appeared beyond the train windows, this isolation, struggle, and heroism was clearly marked in their faces.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Naturally, I wanted to know more about Mexico, so I borrowed a book from the Public Library by Carlton Beals. The book was fascinating, as of course any book about any people would have to be.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Did it hurt?"

"No," I said.

The thing that hurt was the accident itself--the foolishness of it.

I have always hated having foolish things happen to me.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“That's how it is with us. Even our worst enemies in time become precious.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“After I was settled, I walked down the hill and came to a place with fine gardens inside a high metal picket fence, and as the gate was open I went in.

It was the Bahai Temple. It was the Main Office of International Bahai, a very nice religion without much of an image, with no hero, or at any rate no hysterical hero, no big show-biz trial, no fancy parables, no crucifixion, just a man who sincerely believed there was a nice way for everybody to live.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“You can't be with any government and not be thereby compromised forever.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“I went to the typing class every morning for almost two full months before typing became automatic.

If I thought a word, my fingers typed it. If I thought a sentence, my fingers typed the sentence. If I had in mind a whole paragraph, my fingers kept right up with my thinking. That was one of the big achievements of my early life in Fresno. And I loved the break-through and the skill that came with it.

Nothing could stop me now.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Going, leaving one place to get to another, always seemed vital and basic to me. For a new man, Fresno was no place to linger. Since I couldn't go in person, by train or car, I went in spirit, by book, and so the Public Library became a kind of depot for me.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“All of my time, the very earliest, the latest, the most recent, all of it, every instant of it has never been totally free of sorrow. The sorrow was second nature or innate or inevitable, it was there all the time: it gave a thoughtful brooding cast to the visage. There was almost never a complaint, because complaining was in bad taste, although that did not prevent me from having definite if private opinions about people who were plainly sons of bitches. Also there at all times, side by side with the sorrow, or possibly even a part of it, was humor--an awareness of air, light, sounds, smells, and unaccountable ideas.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“The early years were so packed with everything that one year seemed like like a very long time, as of course it was. It is only when the years begin to repeat themselves that they seem to be gone almost instantly.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“I have always believed in asking a question if the answer might prove interesting and is given free of charge.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“I didn't know where I was going, but I was going swiftly.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“He had been in New York the whole year managing his father's winery and office in lower Manhattan, but now he'd come home by train for Christmas--and the world was wonderful. Three thousand miles was nothing, you got on a train, you had your own private little room, you changed at Chicago, you ate great meals in the diner, you read mystery stories and newspapers in the club car, and then all of a sudden there you were back in Fresno, and there everybody was, standing on the station platform waiting for you. Who could ask for anything more?”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Well, some places are happy places and some aren't, and that's pretty much all you can say about the matter. But if you think on it, you soon discover that no place is totally without happiness, possibly not even the grave--but we're not going there, you and I. When we die, it just isn't going to be us. Coming around the stretch, boxed in, we're going to find a little opening, and before anybody knows what's going on, we're going to ease through, and move out, and come down to the wire all alone, and go away, hollering and laughing, uncaught again, again uncatchable.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time

“Places make us--let's not imagine that once we're here anything else does. First genes, then places--after that it's every man for himself, God help us, and good luck to one and all.”
― William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time