Quotes from William Saroyan

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.

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

I care so much about everything that I care about nothing

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

She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn't like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn't stop, and she didn't like that at all.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.

I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.

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.

Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.

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

The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.

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.

The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

What do you mean, what's the matter with him? Nothing's the matter with him, everything's the matter with him, the same as it is with everybody else. He's just fine. He gets overwhelmed now and then, and he doesn't know how to say what he feels or means, so he cries and runs off a little, trying to find out where to go, for God's sake. Where can you go?

I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.

Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave.

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

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

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