Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.
William Saroyan
Image
In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.
William Saroyan
Image
Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
I'm not the kind of guy to knock at a door and then when the door is opened not go in.
William Saroyan
Image
Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.
William Saroyan
Image
Remember that every man is a variation of yourself
William Saroyan
Image
Art is what is irresistible.
William Saroyan
Image
Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.
William Saroyan
Image
Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.
William Saroyan
Image
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.
William Saroyan
Image
Yes, the idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.
William Saroyan
Image
Of course if you like your kids, if you love them from the moment they begin, you yourself begin all over again, in them, with them, and so there is something more to the world again.
William Saroyan
Image
The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind.
William Saroyan
Image
I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.
William Saroyan
Image
Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan
Image
We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.
William Saroyan