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I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't 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
Veterinarian
Writer
Probably
Happiness
Makes
Writing

More quotes by William Saroyan

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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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Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.
William Saroyan
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I see life as one life at one time, so many millions simultaneously, all over the earth.
William Saroyan
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Human memory works its own wheel, and stops where it will, entirely without reference to the last stop, and with no connection with the next.
William Saroyan
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The Tax Collector's letters are invariably mimeographed, and all they say is that you still haven't paid him.
William Saroyan
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What a people talk about means something. What they don't talk about means something.
William Saroyan
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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 common and constant truth of all, of all life, all law and order, the very thing which holds everything together, which permits everything to move along in time and be its wonderful or ordinary self.
William Saroyan
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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
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Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.
William Saroyan
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My work has always been the product of my time.
William Saroyan
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What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?
William Saroyan
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Art is what is irresistible.
William Saroyan
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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.
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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Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.
William Saroyan
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To Armenians, half Armenians, quarter Armenians, and one-eight Armenians. Sixteen and thirty-second Armenians, and other winners, are likelier to be happy with a useful book
William Saroyan
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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 am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.
William Saroyan
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Nothing good ever ends.
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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People are people. Don't be afraid of them.
William Saroyan