Quotes from William Saroyan

Eating cherries on a hot July afternoon in Michigan is one of the greatest things that can happen to anybody, and here it is right now - three minutes after three - happening to ME, and to you.

Of the unchanging things, the town in which you first saw the light is one of the most unchanging. It is always a place of monotony but at the same time, as you grow, change, go away, remember, return, and go away again, it is one of the most inexhaustibly rich places. And yet what it is is so nearly nothing, except for the dull, drab, lonely, lost objects of it, that you never know, each time you return to it, what it is that holds you so strongly to it.

The person of a man may leave—or be taken away—but the best part of a good man stays. It stays forever. Love is immortal and makes all things immortal. But hate dies every minute.

My work has always been the product of my time.

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

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

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.

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

Of course if you like your kids if you love them from the moment they begin you yourself begin all over again in them and with them.

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

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.