Quote

I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

William Saroyan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Saroyan
Age: 72 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 31
Died: 1981
Died: May 18
Dramatist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Fresno
California
Health
Ill
Age
Escape
Natural
Inevitable
Unimportance
Writing
Madness
Uselessness
Things
Despair
Insignificance
Early
Enslavement
Took
Unattractive
Poverty
Manner

More quotes by William Saroyan

Image
I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.
William Saroyan
Image
You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.
William Saroyan
Image
In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.
William Saroyan
Image
Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan
Image
What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?
William Saroyan
Image
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 within immortal. That is the whole truth.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
William Saroyan
Image
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.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
My work has always been the product of my time.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
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 it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself.
William Saroyan
Image
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.
William Saroyan
Image
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
William Saroyan
Image
The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.
William Saroyan
Image
If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.
William Saroyan
Image
Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child.
William Saroyan