William Saroyan Quotes - Page 4

The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably.

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?

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

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief.

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 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.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

The order I found was the order of disorder

San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.

The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.

Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child.

It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books.

What can a man do to move along in some kind of grace through his days and years?

We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.

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.

What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?

You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.

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

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.

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.

Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.

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

I'm not the kind of guy to knock at a door and then when the door is opened not go in.

If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.

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