William Saroyan (1908 – 1981)
Armenian American author, famous for his novel The Human Comedy (1943), and other works dealing with the comedies and tragedies of everyday existence.
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.
One 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.
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.
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.
You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
The purpose of my life is to put off dying as long as possible.
Art is what is irresistible.
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?
Art and religion would not be able to stop the war any more than they would be able to stop tomorrow.
Always, Bill talked about being and becoming a writer, of all the stories and ideas inside him that had to come out.
We knew he had been sending out stories all along and collecting rejection slips but the day in 1934 when Joe Danysh and I arrived at the front door of the gallery and found the envelope addressed to us both, we knew it had really begun. Inside were two one dollar bills, two street car transfers and a card which read "One for the, money / one for the show / one For Virginia / and one for Joe." Signed William Shakespeare.
I began to visit Armenia as soon as I had earned the necessary money.
If I want to do anything, I want to speak a more universal language.
I loved the theaters, and even though I was hungry, I never spent money for food.
Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.
Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
It is better to be a good human being than to be a bad one. It is just naturally better.
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.
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.
Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.
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.