Saroyan Quotes

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else. ~ William, Saroyan

The order I found was the order of disorder ~ 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

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

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief. ~ 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

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

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

Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality. ~ William, Saroyan

My uncle Khosrove became very irritated and shouted, It's no harm. What is the loss of a horse? Haven't we all lost the homeland? What is this crying over a horse? ~ 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

Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers. ~ William, Saroyan

...Each of you will begin to be truly human when, in spite of your natural dislike of one another, you still respect one another. That is what it means to be civilized. ~ William, Saroyan

This is a hell of a night. I don't want to leave it just to go to sleep. ~ William, Saroyan

No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does. Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living. ~ William, Saroyan

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

The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business. ~ 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

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

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

What the hell are they all looking for? A way out. A way to the right way out. A way to leave. A way to go.
A way to have had it, to have had enough of it, to be done with it.
A decent way to give it all over to the giver of it all, ~ William, Saroyan

I used to throw things out, saying, 'This isn't great.' It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great. ~ William, Saroyan

Illness must be considered to be as natural as health. ~ William, Saroyan

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

How can you talk if you don't say anything? I said.
You talk without words. We are always talking without words.
Well, what good are words, then?
Not very good, most of the time. Most of the time they're only good to keep back what you really want to say, or something you don't want known. ~ William, Saroyan

Dear lady, ... dear gentleman, reader, [it's] not right ... to put down this writer on his writing ... And I'll tell you why, too: it hurts, that's why.... People try to understand why writers commit suicide by jumping off boats or by alcoholism or by being heroic continuously or by rope or gun or drug or knife or water, and ... I can tell you straight out, ... it is reading slurring remarks about their writing that drives writers to the grave. Dirty remarks passed by ... dirty but damned nicely educated and very highly-paid ladies and gentlemen have the effect of killing writers. Yes, that's right. Dirty words ... in slick paper magazines read by smart people do assassinate writers. ... And boy let me tell you I am all for it, even when by some ... misunderstanding the dirty words are directed to me rather than to the party really deserving them. Accidents happen, dear clever reviewer or critic, and let it not be said that William Saroyan is one not to see a situation from the point of view of the other party, ... and I shall be the first to defend your right to be critical and even sarcastic, knowing full well that it is not about me and my writing, although my name is by mistake taken in vain by you. ... But go on, go on, do your good clever writing, every one of you, I am home, your are home, and we are each of us not yet on Variety's Necrology list, so if we can't take it, who can? ~ 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

One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words ~ 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

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed. ~ William, Saroyan

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give. ~ William, Saroyan

All things lie dark in possibility. ~ William, Saroyan

The people you like when you meet them and while you know them, and the people you remember fondly, are invariably people who have a sense of comedy, not just a sense of humor. ~ William, Saroyan

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

I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else
and better too! ~ William, Saroyan

Armenag Saroyan. A good man of whom the worst that anybody was willing to say, was that he was too good for this world. ~ 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

My work has always been the product of my time. ~ William, Saroyan

Their singing wasn't particularly good, but the feeling with which they sang was not bad at all. ~ 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

Everything is changed for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the world has always been full of that loneliness. ~ William Saroyan

What can a man do to move along in some kind of grace through his days and years? ~ William, Saroyan

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop ~ William, Saroyan

San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure. ~ 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

Love is immortal and makes all things immortal. But hate dies every minute. ~ Saroyan William

The Americans have found the healing of God in a variety of things, the most pleasant of which is probably automobile drives. ~ 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

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

This was such bad writing that it was good. ~ William, Saroyan

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

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even? ~ William, Saroyan

In getting from Windsor to Detroit there is a choice between a free tunnel and a toll bridge, which turned out to be a short ride for a dollar, which I mentioned to the toll-collector who said, 'One of those things,' impelling me to remark to my cousin, 'Almost everything said by people one sees for only an instant is something like poetry. Precise, incisive, and just right, and the reason seems to be that there isn't time to talk prose. This suggests several things, the most important of which is probably that a writer ought not to permit himself to feel that he has all the time in the world in which to write his story or play or novel. He ought to set himself a time-limit, and the shorter the better. And he ought to do a lot of other things while he is working within this time-limit, so that he will always be under pressure, in a hurry, and therefore have neither the inclination nor the time to be fussy, which is the worst thing that happens to a book while it's being written. ~ William, Saroyan

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

I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant ~ 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

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

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

Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met. ~ William, Saroyan

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again. ~ 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

People are people. Don't be afraid of them. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art is what is irresistible. ~ William, Saroyan

What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know? ~ 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

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

I believe in anything that works. ~ 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

Hemingway and Saroyan had the line, the magic of it. The problem was that Hemingway didn't know how to laugh and Saroyan was filled with sugar. ~ Charles Bukowski

I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it. ~ William, Saroyan

But who can speak to God, or rather who can't? The question is, who can get an answer? ~ William, Saroyan

But try to remember that a good man can never die. You will see your brother many times again-in the streets, at home, in all the places of the town. The person of a man may go, but the best part of him stays. It stays forever. ~ 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

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

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

You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself. ~ William, Saroyan

A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography. ~ 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

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

Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student. ~ 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

Be, beget, begone. ~ William, Saroyan

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness. ~ 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

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

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

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

I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death. ~ William, Saroyan

Sunday is the day people go quietly mad, one way or another. ~ William, Saroyan

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

I can see the beauty of everything only through a fog. ~ Nrane Saroyan