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

William Saroyan

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William Saroyan
Age: 72 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 31
Died: 1981
Died: May 18
Dramatist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Fresno
California
Spirituality
Necessarily
Gratitude
Greatest
Knowing
Happiness
Cheer
Require

More quotes by William Saroyan

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Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
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This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.
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Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.
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I believe in anything that works.
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I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes.
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If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief.
William Saroyan
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Art is what is irresistible.
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All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
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All comedians are people who really deeply consider the human experience not only a dirty trick perpetrated by a totally meaningless procedure of accidents, but an unbearable ordeal every day, which can be made tolerable only by mockery in one form or another.
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San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure.
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I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.
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Live, for this is the time of your life.
William Saroyan
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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.
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My work has always been the product of my time.
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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 forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.
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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.
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We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.
William Saroyan
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All of the sudden, he said, I feel different-- not like I ever felt before. Even when Papa died I didn't feel this way. In two days everything is changed. I'm lonely and I don't now what I'm lonely for
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What can a man do to move along in some kind of grace through his days and years?
William Saroyan
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Whoever the kid had been, whoever had had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: )You just change your attitude now please, young man.
William Saroyan