41 William Saroyan Quotes on Life

William Saroyan quotes on life

8. 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.

12. What the hell are they all looking for? A way out. A way to the right way out. A way to leave. A way to go. A way to have had it, to have had enough of it, to be done with it. A decent way to give it all over to the giver of it all.

20. When I was fifteen and had quit school forever, I went to work in a vineyard near Sanger with a number of Mexicans, one of whom was only a year or two older than myself, an earnest boy named Felipe. One gray, dismal, cold, dreary day in January, while we were pruning muscat vines, I said to this boy, simply in order to be talking, 'If you had your wish, Felipe, what would you want to be? A doctor, a farmer, a singer, a painter, a matador, or what?' Felipe thought a minute, and then he said, 'Passenger.' This was exciting to hear, and definitely something to talk about at some length, which we did. He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.

24. Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?

25. The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

29. The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

30. Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.

31. Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body. For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man. An ocean of print undulated endlessly and darkly before him. The city burned. The herded crowd rioted. The earth circled away, and knowing that he did so, he turned his lost face to the empty sky and became dreamless, unalive, perfect.

39. I have a faint idea what it is like to be alive.

43. I see life as one life at one time, so many millions simultaneously, all over the earth.

50. Everything begins with inhale and exhale, and never ends.

59. I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death.

66. The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

67. 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.

74. The purpose of my life is to put off dying as long as possible.

75. 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.

78. In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.

80. I have made a fiasco of my life, but I have had the right material to work with.

90. In the time of your life, live - so that in good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. 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.

92. Don't forget that some things count more than other things.

114. Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but every life shall one day end. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. You shall know your father better as you grow and know yourself better. He is not dead, because you are alive. Time and accident, illness and weariness took his body, but already you have given it back to him, younger and more eager than ever. I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But I know you will remember this - that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world - no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.

115. How did roses ever happen?

117. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

119. There's a pretty woman for ever lucky man in the world: every man in the world is a lucky man if he only knew it, so why waste time?

120. Jim Dandy waves his stick over and around about the rock in a meaningless-meaningful way.

122. Be, beget, begone.

123. We know more than we need to know.

124. Somewhere among every man's ancestors is a prince or a lord, a priest or a saint, and don't forget it. Wake up! Inherit the wealth of your ancestors!.. Stop living like a mouse, live like the rich people do.

128. My illness is life itself.

129. Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.

132. I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.

136. The world was my home and I was glad to be in it.

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

145. Love of the streets is the love out of which I see deeply I love God, how near I come to the truth.

146. The end of life evokes the errors of it, and a fellow wishes he had known better.

153. Three times in my life I have been captured: by the orphanage, by school, and by the Army. I was four years in the orphanage, seven or eight in school, and three in the Army. Each seemed forever, though. But I'm mistaken. The fact is I was captured only once, when I was born, only that capture is also setting free, which is what this is actually all about. The free prisoner.

159. He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but weren't sure we saw. He paints for the dead, to remind us that - great good God, think of it - we're alive, and on our way to weather, from the sea to the hot interior, to watermelon there, a bird at night chasing a child past flowering cactus, a building on fire, barking dogs, and guitar-players not playing at eight o'clock, every picture saying, 'Did you live, man? Were you alive back there for a little while? Good for you, good for you, and wasn't it hot, though? Wasn't it great when it was hot, though?'

160. If the great one found out about my fight with Death, and came to be near me, what good things we might all expect from being in the world. and then around daybreak I knew I had come through, and now at last fell into real sleep - alone, and proud, and alive - now more alive than ever.

162. Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.

168. I have been vitally aware of the Law of Opposites, and this awareness has kept me reasonably serene... the drama of life... the play of truth. the quarrel of fools and frauds, male and female, the classic and the romantic, the disciplined and the free... the comic and the tragic contrasting of the opposites in all areas of possibility and on and on and on.

169. My work is writing, but my real work is being.