William Saroyan quotes

William Saroyan was an Armenian-American writer and playwright, celebrated for his stories and plays about the immigrant experience and everyday life. His works often highlight themes of human kindness, resilience, and the joys and struggles of ordinary people. He received international acclaim and won major awards for his unique literary voice. Here are 207 of his quotes:

My work is writing, but my real work is being. (William Saroyan)
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited. View quote
William Saroyan
All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too. View quote
William Saroyan
I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant. View quote
William Saroyan
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness. View quote
William Saroyan
What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America. View quote
William Saroyan
You write a hit play the same way you write a flop. View quote
William Saroyan
I believe in my work and am eager for others to know about it. View quote
William Saroyan
Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play. View quote
William Saroyan
It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear. View quote
William Saroyan
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. (William Saroyan)
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. View quote
William Saroyan
What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men. View quote
William Saroyan
There is only good and bad art. View quote
William Saroyan
I have made a fiasco of my life, but I have had the right material to work with. View quote
William Saroyan
Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. View quote
William Saroyan
Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what? View quote
William Saroyan
We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in. View quote
William Saroyan
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. View quote
William Saroyan
Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave. View quote
William Saroyan
My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country? Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there? The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass, the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there? The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking? Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there? (William Saroyan)
I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being. View quote
William Saroyan
I have always been a laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laughter to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed. View quote
William Saroyan
Don't forget that some things count more than other things. View quote
William Saroyan
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? View quote
William Saroyan