William Saroyan Quotes

121 quotes in 1292 categories

• We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
• Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
• Be grateful for yourself...be thankful.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• My work is writing, but my real work is being.
• Of all the things I love to taste, sweetest is the kiss of love.
• 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…
• People is all everything is, all it has ever been, all it can ever be.
• Love doesn't have to be perfect. Even perfect, it is still the best thing there is, for the simple reason that it is the most…
• 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…
• In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic…
• 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…
• All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
• Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
• Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
• San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller…
• If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.
• I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and…

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