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There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

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
Recognition
Fact
Facts
Extreme
Vanity
Extremes

More quotes by William Saroyan

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Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective. The truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it.
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.
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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If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief.
William Saroyan
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Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.
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.
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.
William Saroyan
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My work is writing, but my real work is being.
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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It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.
William Saroyan
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Doctors don't know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in the spirit.
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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I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!
William Saroyan
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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.
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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It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.
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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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