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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.

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
Riding
Fishing
Instinct
Machines
Fooling
Americans
Rowing
Born
Indians
Around
Hunting
Swimming

More quotes by William Saroyan

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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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What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.
William Saroyan
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The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably.
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Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.
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I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.
William Saroyan
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All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
William Saroyan
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There is a small area of land in Asia Minor that is called Armenia, but it is not so. It is not Armenia. It is a place. There are only Armenians, and they inhabit the earth, not Armenia, since there is no Armenia. There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth.
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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Nothing good ever ends.
William Saroyan
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All comedians are people who really deeply consider the human experience not only a dirty trick perpetrated by a totally meaningless procedure of accidents, but an unbearable ordeal every day, which can be made tolerable only by mockery in one form or another.
William Saroyan
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I believe in anything that works.
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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A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
William Saroyan
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Art is what is irresistible.
William Saroyan
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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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This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.
William Saroyan
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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.
William Saroyan
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It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books.
William Saroyan
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The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too.
William Saroyan
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We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
William Saroyan