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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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William Saroyan
Age: 72 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 31
Died: 1981
Died: May 18
Dramatist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Fresno
California
Book
Quarters
Winner
Thirty
Useful
Eight
Armenians
Second
Winners
Half
Sixteen
Happy
Quarter

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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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People is all everything is, all it has ever been, all it can ever be.
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The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.
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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.
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Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.
William Saroyan
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How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.
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We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.
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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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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.
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I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.
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I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!
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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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What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.
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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.
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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.
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Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.
William Saroyan
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I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it.
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You live and die according to what goes on in yourself, which no one else can even begin to know, not even father, mother, wife, son, or daughter.
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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.
William Saroyan