Saroyan Quotes

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

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze 1933

 

I didn't earn one dollar by any means other than writing... If an editor liked a story as I had written it, 
he could buy it. If he wanted parts of it written over, I did not do that work. I have never been subsidized…

I have never accepted money connected with a literary prize or award… 
Once I was urged by friends to file an application for a Guggenheim Fellowship...

My application was turned down and I began to breathe freely again.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze 1933

 

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.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze 1933

 

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

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

It is the heart of man that I am trying to imply in this work.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

If I want to do anything, I want to speak a more universal language.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

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…

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

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

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

If I want to do anything, I want to speak a more universal language.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

I do not believe in races.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

If I have any desire at all, it is to show the brotherhood of man.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

I am out here in the far West, in San Francisco, in a small room on Carl Street,

writing a letter to common people, telling them in simple language what they already know.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

A man must pretend not to be a writer.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

A writer is always wanting to get the reality of faces and figures.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

You know the look: genius gone to pot, and ready to join the Communist Party.

Seventy Thousand Assyrians 1934

 

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. 
I see it as a large thing too, only I break it into small units of one man at a time,

and see it as a large and monstrous thing for each man involved. 
I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers,

and all the men who survived the war, including myself, 
I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers. There is no such thing as a soldier. 
I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, 
and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign.

The Resurrection Of A Life 1935

 

Everything begins with inhale and exhale, and never ends…

The Resurrection Of A Life 1935

 

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.

The Resurrection 1935

 

I love Armenian people - all of them. I love them because they are a part of the enormous human race, 
which of course I find simultaneously beautiful and vulnerable.

First Visit to Armenia 1935

 

… it is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate,

to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.

First Visit to Armenia 1935

 

11-year-old son of a great big man from perhaps Moush… informed me that his country, Armenia,

was greater than my country, America. I asked, Why? He replied, Because I am here…

this demonstration of high spirits, of confidence in the future, this pleasure in being alive and at home,

informed me unmistakably that the future of … Armenia was assured.

First Visit to Armenia 1935

 

There was a touch of anxiety in the whole human race about its future.

First Visit to Armenia 1935

 

… I began to visit Armenia as soon as I had earned the necessary money…

First Visit to Armenia 1935

 

All things lie dark in possibility

Baby 1936

 

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…

Inhale and Exhale 1936

 

Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite,

and many may achieve genius only through play.

Three Times Three 1936

 

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.

Three Times Three 1936

 

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

Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia, 1936

 

I have been to the place. Armenia. There is no nation there, but that is all the better.

But I have been to that place, and I know this: that there is no nation in the world,

no England and France and Italy, and no nation whatsoever…

Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia, 1936

 

My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country?

Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there?

The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass,

the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there?

The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking?

Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there?

Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia, 1936

 

It's all over. We can begin to forget Armenia now. Andranik is dead.

The nation is lost… 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.

Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia, 1936

 

My uncle jumped up from the desk, loving him more than he loved any other man in the world,

and through him loving the lost nation, the multitude dead,

and the multitude living in every alien corner of the world. … when Andranik went away...

I saw that tears were in his eyes and his mouth was twisting with agony like the mouth of a small boy

who is in great pain but will not let himself cry…

Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia, 1936

 

I was a little afraid of him; not the boy himself, but of what he seemed to be: the victim of the world.

Little Children 1937

 

…felt, known, and believed: … substance, energy, intelligence, man, motion, thought, impulse, and act …

Two Theatres 1938

 

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

I care so much about everything that I care about nothing.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

My superficial manners stink and my profound manners are almost as bad.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

The business of polishing my shoes satisfies my soul.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

Poetry must be read to be poetry. It may be that one reader is all that I deserve.

If this is so, I want that reader to be you.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

I am deeply opposed to violence in all its forms,

and yet I myself am violent in spirit, in my quarrel with the unbeatable:

myself, my daemon, God, the human race, the world, time, pain, disorder, disgrace and death.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

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

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

Go ahead. Fire your feeble guns. You won't kill anything. There will always be poets in the world.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

There is only good and bad art.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

… nothing has ever been more sure-fire than truth and integrity.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

I believe in my work and am eager for others to know about it.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

It is better to be a good human being than to be a bad one. It is just naturally better.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, 
more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

Art comes from the world, belongs to it, can never escape from it.

My Heart's in the Highlands 1939

 

In the time of your life, live-so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness

or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let be free and unashamed.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow

by the shame and terror of the world.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Be the inferior of no man, nor of anyman be the superior.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Despise evil and un godliness but not men of un godliness or evil.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Have no shame in being kindly or gentle.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

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.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

A play is a world, with its own inhabitants and its own laws and its values.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

… don't forget that some things count more than other things.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

Each person belongs to the environment, in his own person, as himself.

The Time of Your Life 1939

 

He was just a young man who'd come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something,

who'd taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too.

That's the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.

Locomotive 38, the Ojibway, 1940

 

Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. 
Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.

Locomotive 38, the Ojibway, 1940

 

The race was over. I was last, by ten yards.

Without the slightest hesitation I protested and challenged the runners to another race, same distance, back.

They refused to consider my proposal, which proved, I knew, that they were afraid to race me.

I told them they knew very well I could beat them.

The Fifty Yard Dash 1940

 

Their singing wasn't particularly good, but the feeling with which they sang was not bad at all.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

Everything is changed - for you. But it is still the same, too.

The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child.

But the whole world has always been full of that loneliness. The loneliness does not come from the War.

The War did not make it. It was the loneliness that made the War.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even.

You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life.

Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief,

he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief.

And the more you give, the more you will have to give.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

Everything alive is part of each us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us.

The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. 
All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

Nothing good ever ends.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

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.

The Human Comedy 1943

 

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.

The Declaration of War 1944

 

No foundation. All the way down the line... Whole world.
I don't want money from people like you.

The Declaration of War 1944

 

It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.

Letter to Robert E. Sherwood 1946

 

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.

One Day in the Afternoon of the World 1946

 

On day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk,

you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.

One Day in the Afternoon of the World 1946

 

Let me choose my friends in my own way.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

Give me something about bacteria. Give me something that won't make me feel so inferior.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

How did roses ever happen?

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

How did money ever happen? What's it mean? What's it for?

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

Is that all that happens?

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

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

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

He knew the truth and was looking for something better.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

Who are you to read The Bible?

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

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?

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

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

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

The Maharajah: I had three secrets and sold them all.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

… the rose taught me the third (secret)… be, beget, begone…

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

That finished my secret business. Now I sell fortunes and forecasts.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

We know more than we need to know.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

Good things died as they were being born.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

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.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

The Maharajah: One nickel, one secret. No exchanges, no refunds.

Jim Dandy. Fat Man in a Famine 1947

 

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,

The Assyrian 1950

 

I was an old man by the time I took that walk to the Public Library in San Francisco, 
because the years between birth and twenty are the years in which the soul travels farthest and swiftest.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Neither love nor hate, nor any order of intense adherence to personal involvement in human experience, 
may be so apt to serve the soul as this freedom and this necessity to be kind.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

My illness is life itself.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Illness is essentially discomfort, and it is not easy for anybody to be comfortable all the time...

in his body, in his work, in his house, or in his soul.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

I had in my soul the greatest truths to tell, but when I came to the work of telling them I couldn't do it.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

A man cannot write a poem or a story that will transform the whole nature of man,

his reality and his truth, making them greater and nobler.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

My writing is careless, but all through it is something that is good, that is mine alone,

that no other writer could ever achieve.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Power goes with genius only.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

The streets made me, and the streets stink, but I love them,

for I was born in them out of flesh and I was born in them out of spirit.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

I loved the theaters, and even though I was hungry, I never spent money for food.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

But the world was my home and I was glad to be in it.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

The order I found was the order of disorder.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

My writing is careless, but all through it is something that is good, that is mine alone,

that no other writer could ever achieve.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Neither love nor hate, nor any order of intense adherence to personal involvement in human experience,

may be so apt to serve the soul as this freedom and this necessity to be kind.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Boredom was the plague of my childhood… While I was at the orphanage, 
the boredom came from being in a place I did not wish to be… I was bored.

I was bored the entire four years I was there.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

… he (George Bernard Shaw) was a gentle, delicate, kind, little man who had established a pose,

and then lived it so steadily and effectively that the pose had become real.

Like myself, his nature has been obviously a deeply troubled one in the beginning.

He had been a man who had seen the futility, meaninglessness and sorrow of life but had permitted himself

to thrust aside these feelings and to perform another George Bernard Shaw, which is art and proper.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Shaw… is the tonic of the Christian peoples of the world.

He is health, wisdom, and comedy, and that's what I am too… If you must know which writer

has influenced my writing when influences are real and for all I know enduring,

then that writer has been George Bernard Shaw.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Many friendships are swift and accidental, the result of a chance meeting, followed by a permanent separation.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude,

or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

A writer wants what he has to say to be heard again and again. He wants it to be heard after he is dead.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

Merely to survive is to keep the hope greatness, accuracy, and the grace alive.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

But the world was my home and I was glad to be in it.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably is happiness.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

The order I found was the order of disorder.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

The real story can never be told. It is untellable.

The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time… There is no point in glancing at the past,

in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art - that is, the meaningful-real.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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.

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills 1952

 

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.

The William Saroyan Reader 1958

 

I'm a man with too much brawn to be an intellectual, exclusively. 
I married a small sensitive cultured woman so that my kids would be sissies instead of suckers.

Man and Superman 1960

 

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.

Here Comes There Goes You Know Who 1961

 

I was never interested in the obvious, or in the details one takes for granted,

and everybody seemed to be addicted to the obvious, being astonished by it,

and forever harping about the details which I had long ago weighted, measured,

and discarded as irrelevant and useless. If you can measure it, don't. If you can weigh it,

it isn't worth the bother. It isn't what you're after. It isn't going to get it.

My wisdom was visual and as swift as vision.

I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?"

Here Comes There Goes You Know Who 1961

 

In those days, there was something more to the world than there is now.

Well, my kids were little, let's put it that way, and 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.

Here Comes There Goes You Know Who 1961

 

I believed from the beginning of remembered experience that I was somebody

with an incalculable potential for enlargement, somebody who both knew and could find out,

upon whom demands could be made with the expectation of having them fulfilled

Here Comes There Goes You Know Who 1961

 

I am interested in madness.

I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. 
How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? 
Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene

and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

Short Drive, Sweet Chariot 1966

 

Armenag Saroyan.

A good man of whom the worst that anybody was willing to say … was that he was too good for this world.

I Used to Believe I Had Forever, But Now I'm Not So Sure 1968

 

I liked Yeghishe Charentz straight off,

but more important than this was the feeling that I had that he was a truly great man. 
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. Charentz seemed great to me, I think, 
because he was made of a mixture of proud virtues and amusing flaws. 
On the one hand, his independence of spirit was balanced by a humorous worldliness, 
his acute intelligence by a curiosity that frequently made him seem naive, 
his profoundly gentle manners by a kind of mocking mischievousness 
which might easily be mistaken for rudeness. But he was never rude, he was witty, 
and the purpose of his wit was to keep himself from the terrible condition of pomposity.

I Used to Believe I Had Forever, But Now I'm Not So Sure 1968

 

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.

Places Where I've Done Time, 1972

 

I was four years old, and had long since reasoned that it was folly to expect the big things from people. 
It was enough to get the little things. The biggest thing, of course, was love, 
the nearness of somebody you love when you need somebody to be near.

Places Where I've Done Time, 1972

 

To Armenians, half Armenians, quarter Armenians, and one-eight Armenians. 
Sixteen and thirty-second Armenians, and other winners, are likelier to be happy with a useful book.

Places Where I've Done Time, 1972

 

Armenag saroyan… was the failed poet, 
the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student …

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, 
upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. 
Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. 
Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

I had long known that there was something about me that was either violent or frightening for some reason. 
In certain three-sided clothing store images I had for some years come upon myself, 
with shock and disbelief, regret, and shame, disappointment and despair, for I am indeed clearly violent, 
mad, and ugly, all because of intensity of some kind, a tension, 
an obsession with getting everything that there was to be got, a passion, an insanity.

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

... it was quite simply true that the Irish cook's meat pie was one of the finest table 
experiences of my young life.

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

… the idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

Jesus never said anything about absurdity, 
and he never indicated for one flash of time that he was aware of the preposterousness of his theory about himself. 
And he didn't even try to make the theory understandable in terms of the reality and experience of the rest of us. 
For if everybody else is also not what Jesus said he was, what good is what he said.

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever 1976

 

The people you hate, well, this is the question about such people: why do you hate them?

Chance Meetings, 1978

 

I have frequently misunderstood things.

Chance Meetings, 1978

 

The comedians I am thinking about are the comedians of the world, not of the stage.

Chance Meetings, 1978

 

… the boy on the Oakland porch goes to sleep upon the universe of ice

and wakes up and remembers the death of his father and mother, and sees the sun …

Obituaries 1979

 

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…

Obituaries 1979

 

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

Obituaries 1979

 

To remember something or to invent something, it comes to the same thing.

Obituaries 1979

 

Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective…
the truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it.

Memories of the Depression, 1981

 

Art can no longer afford to be contemptuous of politics, and it appears to be time politics 
took a little instruction from art.

Something About a Soldier

 

The weakness of art is that great poems do not ennoble politics, as they certainly should,

and the trouble with politics is that they inspire poets only to mockery and scorn.

Something About a Soldier

 

Art and politics must move closer together.

Reflection and action must be equally valid in good men if history is not to take one course and art an other.

Something About a Soldier

 

Wars, for us, are either inevitable, or created. Whatever they are, they should not wholly vitiate art. 
What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.

Something About a Soldier

 

… world-disorderliness on both ordinary and superior human beings, 
canceling the integrity and dignity of the first, and destroying the faith and personal force of the second, 
leaving man in art speechless, unwilling to act, incapable of accepting responsibility to himself and to society.

Something About a Soldier

 

Art and religion would not be able to stop the war any more than they would be able to stop tomorrow.

Something About a Soldier

 

My work has always been the product of my time.

Something About a Soldier

 

Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. 
The priest begs God for grace, and the king begs something for something. 
Sometimes he begs the people for loyalty, sometimes he begs God to forgive him.
No man in the world can have endured ten years without having begged God to forgive him.

The Beggars

 

I saw rich beggars and poor beggars, proud beggars and humble beggars, fat beggars and thin beggars, 
healthy beggars and sick beggars, whole beggars and crippled beggars, wise beggars and stupid beggars. 
I saw amateur beggars and professional beggars. A professional beggar is a beggar who begs for a living.

The Beggars

 

Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, 
teachers, governments, religions, and the law: "You just change your attitude now please, young man." 
This transformation in kids--from flashing dragonflies, so to say, 
to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream--is noticed with pride by society 
and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying 
I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

The Flashing Dragonfly

 

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race; this small tribe of unimportant people 
whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, 
whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered. 
Go ahead, destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915 there is war in the world. Destroy Armenia.
See if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. 
Burn their houses and their churches. See if they will not live again. 
See if they will not laugh again. See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world.
You sons of bitches. Go ahead, try to destroy them.

The Armenian and the Armenian

 

A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awarness than with geography.

The Armenian and the Armenian

 

… what a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America…

The Armenian Writers

 

I want to drink a toast to the Armenian writers of America.

First, because the least one Armenian writer can do for another is to drink to him now…

The Armenian Writers

 

I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely,

no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.

The Armenian Writers

 

If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else.
Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.

A Cold Day

 

There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. 
It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.

A Cold Day

 

This was such bad writing that it was good…

A Cold Day

 

… it seemed to me that I had no right to burn a book I hadn't even read…

A Cold Day

 

When I get tired of reading great writers, I go to this book and read language that I cannot understand.

A Cold Day

 

I couldn't understand the language, I couldn't understand a word in the whole book, 
but it was somehow too eloquent to use for a fire.

A Cold Day

 

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.

A Cold Day

 

I would like to know what the Democratic party ever did for freezing short story writers.

A Cold Day

 

… the only thing I can talk about is the cold because it is the only thing going on today…

A Cold Day