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William Saroyan Quotes
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Jesus never said anything about absurdity, and he never indicated for one flash of time that he was aware of the preposterousness of his theory about himself. And he didn't even try to make the theory understandable in terms of the reality and experience of the rest of us. For if everybody else is also not what Jesus said he was, what good is what he said?
William Saroyan
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The only thing I can talk about is the cold because it is the only thing going on today.
William Saroyan
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The weakness of art is that great poems do not ennoble politics, as they certainly should, and the trouble with politics is that they inspire poets only to mockery and scorn.
William Saroyan
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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
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He knew the truth and was looking for something better.
William Saroyan
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It is the heart of man that I am trying to imply in this work.
William Saroyan
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How did money ever happen? What's it mean? What's it for?
William Saroyan
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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
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The purpose of my life is to put off dying as long as possible.
William Saroyan
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I am an estranged man, said the liar: estranged from myself, from my family, my fellow man, my country, my world, my time, and my culture. I am not estranged from God, although I am a disbeliever in everything about God excepting God indefinable, inside all and careless of all.
William Saroyan
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I believe in my work and am eager for others to know about it.
William Saroyan
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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
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I was an old man by the time I took that walk to the Public Library in San Francisco, because the years between birth and twenty are the years in which the soul travels farthest and swiftest.
William Saroyan
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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 things, and I did so.
William Saroyan
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Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.
William Saroyan
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I have been vitally aware of the Law of Opposites, and this awareness has kept me reasonably serene... the drama of life... the play of truth. the quarrel of fools and frauds, male and female, the classic and the romantic, the disciplined and the free... the comic and the tragic contrasting of the opposites in all areas of possibility and on and on and on.
William Saroyan
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There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.
William Saroyan
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If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.
William Saroyan
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At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.
William Saroyan
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I have been to the place, Armenia. There is no nation there, but that is all the better. But I have been to that place, and I know this: that there is no nation in the world, no England and France and Italy, and no nation whatsoever.
William Saroyan
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I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.
William Saroyan
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Art comes from the world, belongs to it, can never escape from it.
William Saroyan
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The boy on the Oakland porch goes to sleep upon the universe of ice and wakes up and remembers the death of his father and mother, and sees the sun.
William Saroyan
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He was just a young man who'd come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something, who'd taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That's the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.
William Saroyan
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Don't forget that some things count more than other things.
William Saroyan
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
William Saroyan
Creative Commons
Born:
August 31, 1908
Died:
May 18, 1981
(aged 72)
Bio:
William Saroyan was an American dramatist and author. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film adaptation of his novel The Human Comedy.
Known for:
The Human Comedy (1943)
The Time of Your Life (1939)
My Name Is Aram (1937)
Tracy's Tiger (1951)
Hello Out There! (1942)
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