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

More quotes by William Saroyan

Image
I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.
William Saroyan
Image
In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.
William Saroyan
Image
It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.
William Saroyan
Image
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.
William Saroyan
Image
One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Every artist is in everything he creates, and indeed if the truth is told, every person is in his life, in his work, whatever his work may be, and this is visible in his face, figure, stance, movement, and totality.
William Saroyan
Image
Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.
William Saroyan
Image
Yes, the idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.
William Saroyan
Image
People are people. Don't be afraid of them.
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
People is all everything is, all it has ever been, all it can ever be.
William Saroyan
Image
Sunday is the day people go quietly mad, one way or another.
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
In the time of your life, live-so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.
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
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
William Saroyan