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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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William Saroyan
Age: 72 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 31
Died: 1981
Died: May 18
Dramatist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Fresno
California
Shame
Sorrow
Virtue
Whatever
May
Secrecy
Heart
Encourage
World
Terror
Driven

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There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.
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Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.
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The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh?
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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.
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I'm not the kind of guy to knock at a door and then when the door is opened not go in.
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All writers are discontent. That's because they're aware of a potential and believe they're not reaching it.
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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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In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
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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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No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend,and there are many more of these than one would suspect.
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Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
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The order I found was the order of disorder
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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.
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Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
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A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
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I believe in anything that works.
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Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
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Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.
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The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself.
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The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
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