William Saroyan Quotes on Creativity
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Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
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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.
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I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.
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If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.
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What I intended to do was to burn a half dozen of my books and keep warm, so that I could write my story, but when I looked around for titles to burn, I couldn't find any.
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All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.
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A play is a world, with its own inhabitants and its own laws and its values.
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I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.
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My writing is careless, but all through it is something that is good, that is mine alone, that no other writer could ever achieve.
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A writer wants what he has to say to be heard again and again. He wants it to be heard after he is dead.
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At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.
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In order to write all a man needs is paper and a pencil. Furthermore, when a thing has been written, it is written forever. When it is printed, nothing can stop it from being printed again and again if the thing wants to be printed again and again. I must therefore be a writer.