William Saroyan Quotes - Page 5

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

  William Saroyan

  Swimming, Hunting, Fishing

  William Saroyan, William E. Justice (2008). “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader”, Heyday Books

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• I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Firsts, Littles

  William Saroyan (1964). “One day in the afternoon of the world”

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

  William Saroyan

  Fear, Hate, Our World

  Letter to Robert E. Sherwood, 1946.

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• 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

  Father, Years, Two

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• Sunday is the day people go quietly mad, one way or another.

  William Saroyan

  Sunday, People, Mad

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.

  William Saroyan

  Children, Race, Healthy

  William Saroyan (1968). “My heart's in the Highlands”

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• 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

  Style, Genius, Kind

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• There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.

  William Saroyan

  Pride, Men, Knowing

  William Saroyan (1992). “The Man with the Heart in the Highlands & Other Early Stories”, p.141, New Directions Publishing

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• 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

  Baseball, Art, Caring

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• I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!

  William Saroyan

  Teacher, Humans, Human Beings

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• Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.

  William Saroyan

  Men, Self, Luck

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• Human memory works its own wheel, and stops where it will, entirely without reference to the last stop, and with no connection with the next.

  William Saroyan

  Memories, Connections, Lasts

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• 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.

  William Saroyan

  Good Times, Time Of Your Life, Ugliness

  The Time of Your Life (1939)

  7 Copy quote

• I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Thinking, Sentimental

  William Saroyan, William E. Justice (2008). “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader”, Heyday Books

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• I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Years, Ideas

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• 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.

  William Saroyan

  Cancer, Believe, Cutting

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• Standing at the edge of our city, a man could feel that we had made this place of streets and dwellings in the stillness of the desert, and that we had done a brave thing... Or a man could feel that we had made this city in the desert and that it was a fake thing and that our lives were empty lives, and that we were the contemporaries of the jack rabbits.

  William Saroyan

  Men, Cities, Empty Life

  "Saroyan's Literary Quarantine" by Peter H. King, in The Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1997.

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• 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

  Daughter, Son, Technology

  William Saroyan (1976). “Sons come and go, mothers hang in forever”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Nobody, but nobody, is going to tell me I'm not the most. I am. I was the most when everybody else was struggling bitterly to become a little.

  William Saroyan

  Struggle, Self, Littles

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• I love the bicycle. I always have. I can think of no sincere, decent human being, male or female, young or old, saintly or sinful, who can resist the bicycle.

  William Saroyan

  Thinking, Males, Female

  William Saroyan, William E. Justice (2008). “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader”, Heyday Books

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

  William Saroyan

  Book, Consideration, Impression

  William Saroyan (2005). “Essential Saroyan”

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• 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

  Book, Eight, Half

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• 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

  Used

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• 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

  Artist, Movement, May

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• How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

  William Saroyan

  Wise, Art, Writing

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