Quote

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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William Saroyan
Age: 72 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 31
Died: 1981
Died: May 18
Dramatist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Fresno
California
Always
Effects
Profoundest
Hear
Forcing
Full
Dimension
Lying
Context
Truth
Dimensions
Trying
Possibly
Kind
Philosophical
Good
Effect
Berserk

More quotes by William Saroyan

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Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.
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The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.
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I see life as one life at one time, so many millions simultaneously, all over the earth.
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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
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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.
William Saroyan
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Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
William Saroyan
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I saw rich beggars and poor beggars, proud beggars and humble beggars, fat beggars and thin beggars, healthy beggars and sick beggars, whole beggars and crippled beggars, wise beggars and stupid beggars. I saw amateur beggars and professional beggars. A professional beggar is a beggar who begs for a living.
William Saroyan
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Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.
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Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.
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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Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
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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I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful.
William Saroyan
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Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.
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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The order I found was the order of disorder
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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Live, for this is the time of your life.
William Saroyan
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Art is what is irresistible.
William Saroyan
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The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
William Saroyan