William Saroyan

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that__ how_If you practice an art faithfully it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I__ from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.

You know the look: genius gone to pot, and ready to join the Communist Party

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

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

When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.

It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.

But try to remember that a good man can never die. You will see your brother many times again-in the streets, at home, in all the places of the town. The person of a man may go, but the best part of him stays. It stays forever.

When Ulysses saw his brother, a wonderful thing happened to his face. All the terror left his eyes, because now he was hom

You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

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

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.

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.

Every man in the world is better than someolne else and not as good as someone else.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.