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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
Writer
Probably
Happiness
Makes
Writing
Veterinarian

More quotes by William Saroyan

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Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.
William Saroyan
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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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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
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The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.
William Saroyan
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I used to throw things out, saying, 'This isn't great.' It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great.
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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The people you hate, well, this is the question about such people: why do you hate them?
William Saroyan
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I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.
William Saroyan
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Remember that every man is a variation of yourself
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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The people you like when you meet them and while you know them, and the people you remember fondly, are invariably people who have a sense of comedy, not just a sense of humor.
William Saroyan
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When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.
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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Of all the things I love to taste, sweetest is the kiss of love.
William Saroyan
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The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
William Saroyan
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A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
William Saroyan
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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
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The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh?
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
William Saroyan
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Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met.
William Saroyan