William Saroyan
William Saroyan
William Saroyanwas an American dramatist and author. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film adaptation of his novel The Human Comedy...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 August 1908
CityFresno, CA
born flesh love streets
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.
art role
The role of art is to make a world which can be tolerated.
apt freedom human intense love necessity neither nor order personal serve soul
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.
annoying enemy
No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend, and there are many more of these than one would suspect.
god kids noticed pride slowly society sticky worms
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 ...
work
Without pressure, the work doesn't get done at all.
clear eye ignore kindly unworthy
Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.
cheers multitude neither nor rebel walks writer
He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.
passenger
He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.
glad home
But the world was my home and I was glad to be in it.
I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?
alive good great lets paints remind saw sure
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 ...
dime kids open throw truth worth
I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.
add infinite misery mystery shall smile sorrow time variety wondrous
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 variety and mystery of it.