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Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.

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
Speak
Strength
Earth
Rest
Men
Taught
Call
Pretence
Race
Babies
Language
Hatred
Desire
Civilization
Fear
Baby

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My work has always been the product of my time.
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But who can speak to God, or rather who can't? The question is, who can get an answer?
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Live, for this is the time of your life.
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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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If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.
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What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?
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You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.
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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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The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.
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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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San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.
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Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met.
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I care so much about everything that I care about nothing.
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The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.
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Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
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She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn't like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn't stop, and she didn't like that at all.
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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.
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I used to throw things out, saying, 'This isn't great.' It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great.
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