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What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace.

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
Dead
Peace
Living
Weep
Street
Streets
Silence

More quotes by William Saroyan

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I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.
William Saroyan
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Jack Benny had style from the beginning. He stood straight and walked kind of sideways as if he were being gently shoved by a touch of genius.
William Saroyan
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The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too.
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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
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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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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
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The people you like when you meet them and while you know them, and the people you remember fondly, are invariably people who have a sense of comedy, not just a sense of humor.
William Saroyan
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You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.
William Saroyan
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All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
William Saroyan
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You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
William Saroyan
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There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.
William Saroyan
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You live and die according to what goes on in yourself, which no one else can even begin to know, not even father, mother, wife, son, or daughter.
William Saroyan
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I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful.
William Saroyan
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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
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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
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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.
William Saroyan
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We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.
William Saroyan
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A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
William Saroyan
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All writers are discontent. That's because they're aware of a potential and believe they're not reaching it.
William Saroyan
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San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure.
William Saroyan