Quotes from William Saroyan

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

This is a hell of a night. I don't want to leave it just to go to sleep.

Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.

This was such bad writing that it was good.

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.

Each of you will begin to be truly human when, in spite of your natural dislike of one another, you still respect one another. That is what it means to be civilized.

if a man is an honest idiot. i can love him. but i cannot love a dishonest genius

You abandon most readily those works that have no destination other than your own wishes; there is no editor or producer standing there waiting for them... I've told every young writer I know to do the job all the way through even if they think it's no good. Then they'll have the precedent of having finished work.

I want time in which to walk quietly over the earth, among uncrazed men. I want time in which to build a house, inhabit it, create a past with meaning. I want time in which to seek and find love. I want time. I want to be unhurried, uncaught. I want time in which to sleep and waken, in which to dream the truth of my being on earth. Time.

A poverty-stricken nation with a great art is a greater nation than a wealthy nation with a poverty-stricken art.

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

How can you talk if you don't say anything? I said. You talk without words. We are always talking without words. Well, what good are words, then? Not very good, most of the time. Most of the time they're only good to keep back what you really want to say, or something you don't want known.