Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.
William Saroyan
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Ever
Several
Human
Seemed
Humans
Became
Important
Writer
Writing
Race
Years
Upon
Unattractive
Life
Idea
Unreal
Ideas
Imposed
More quotes by William Saroyan
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.
William Saroyan
If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief.
William Saroyan
Live, for this is the time of your life.
William Saroyan
The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.
William Saroyan
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
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
This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.
William Saroyan
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
It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.
William Saroyan
But who can speak to God, or rather who can't? The question is, who can get an answer?
William Saroyan
San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure.
William Saroyan
We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.
William Saroyan
Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
William Saroyan
The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh?
William Saroyan
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
I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.
William Saroyan
There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.
William Saroyan
I have an idea that most of all he is running away from love, because it's too big and too demanding. He's running away from us--from you, from me, from his sister, from himself, too. Who wants to be himself, who wants to be so little, and so captured and limited?
William Saroyan
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
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