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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

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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
Cannot
Fellows
Thing
Biggest
Historians
Something
Large
Legend
Men
General
Involving
Events
Multitudes
Study
Legends
War
Historian
Facts
Clever

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I have never received a telephone call that justified the excitement and fuss of the electronics involved. If I can't see somebody I love, for instance, such as a daughter, or a son, I would rather receive a letter.
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Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child.
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Of course if you like your kids, if you love them from the moment they begin, you yourself begin all over again, in them, with them, and so there is something more to the world again.
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Art is what is irresistible.
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The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
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There is a small area of land in Asia Minor that is called Armenia, but it is not so. It is not Armenia. It is a place. There are only Armenians, and they inhabit the earth, not Armenia, since there is no Armenia. There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth.
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Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.
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Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
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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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I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.
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No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does. Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living.
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No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend,and there are many more of these than one would suspect.
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Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
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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?
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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.
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What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace.
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What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.
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You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
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Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave.
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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.
William Saroyan