William Saroyan Quotes

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.

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.

Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.

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.

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

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

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

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

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

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.

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.

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

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

When Ulysses saw his brother, a wonderful thing happened to his face. All the terror left his eyes, because now he was hom

A poverty-stricken nation with a great art is a greater nation than a wealthy nation with a poverty-stricken art.

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

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how…If you practice an art faithfully it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

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

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

The purpose of art is to give the traveling human race an improved map that shows the way to itself. If art isn't for *that*, what is it for?

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop

I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant

What we want to do is keep from hindering. If it's impossible to help, it's always possible to hinder.

I care so much about everything that I care about nothing

Every man in the world is better than some one else. And not as good as some one else.

Of course if you like your kids if you love them from the moment they begin you yourself begin all over again in them and with them.

Be grateful for yourself... be thankful.

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