Quote

A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.

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
Ethnic
Geography
Identity
Awareness
Personal
Men

More quotes by William Saroyan

Image
Kids are always the only future the human race has.
William Saroyan
Image
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.
William Saroyan
Image
Doctors don't know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in the spirit.
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
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
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 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
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
All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
William Saroyan
Image
Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan
Image
Remember that every man is a variation of yourself
William Saroyan
Image
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
Image
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
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
Of all the things I love to taste, sweetest is the kiss of love.
William Saroyan
Image
Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child.
William Saroyan
Image
What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace.
William Saroyan
Image
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.
William Saroyan
Image
The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy-the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops
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