William Saroyan
I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.Collection: Prayer
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 delight and mystery of it."Collection: Life
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.Collection: Motivational
In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.Collection: Yesterday
It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.Collection: Giving
In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed...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 delight and mystery of it.Collection: Sorrow
Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.Collection: Pain
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.Collection: Inspirational
Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.Collection: Inspiration
Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.Collection: Stars
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.Collection: Happiness
We get very little wisdom from success, you know.Collection: Congratulations
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.Collection: Art
Be grateful for yourself...be thankful.Collection: Gratitude
Art is what is irresistible.Collection: Art
You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.Collection: Giving
Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.Collection: Men
Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm 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.Collection: Writing
Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.Collection: Heart
Love doesn't have to be perfect. Even perfect, it is still the best thing there is, for the simple reason that it is the most common and constant truth of all, of all life, all law and order, the very thing which holds everything together, which permits everything to move along in time and be its wonderful or ordinary self.Collection: Love
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. Laugher 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.Collection: Laughing
Remember that every man is a variation of yourselfCollection: Men
But who can speak to God, or rather who can't? The question is, who can get an answer?Collection: God
When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.Collection: Waiting
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.Collection: Writing
Jack Benny had style from the beginning. He stood straight and walked kind of sideways as if he were being gently shoved by a touch of genius.Collection: Style
Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.Collection: Writing
There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.Collection: Pride
Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't.Collection: Baseball
I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!Collection: Teacher
I have an idea that most of all he is running away from love, because it's too big and too demanding. He's running away from us--from you, from me, from his sister, from himself, too. Who wants to be himself, who wants to be so little, and so captured and limited?Collection: Running
Human memory works its own wheel, and stops where it will, entirely without reference to the last stop, and with no connection with the next.Collection: Memories
Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.Collection: Men
I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.Collection: Writing
In the time of your life, live-so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.Collection: Good Times
I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.Collection: Writing
I have never received a telephone call that justified the excitement and fuss of the electronics involved. If I can't see somebody I love, for instance, such as a daughter, or a son, I would rather receive a letter.Collection: Daughter
Nobody, but nobody, is going to tell me I'm not the most. I am. I was the most when everybody else was struggling bitterly to become a little.Collection: Struggle
I love the bicycle. I always have. I can think of no sincere, decent human being, male or female, young or old, saintly or sinful, who can resist the bicycle.Collection: Thinking
All things lie dark in possibility.Collection: Life
I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.Collection: Writing
Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.Collection: Book
To Armenians, half Armenians, quarter Armenians, and one-eight Armenians. Sixteen and thirty-second Armenians, and other winners, are likelier to be happy with a useful bookCollection: Book
I used to throw things out, saying, 'This isn't great.' It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great.Collection: Used
Every artist is in everything he creates, and indeed if the truth is told, every person is in his life, in his work, whatever his work may be, and this is visible in his face, figure, stance, movement, and totality.Collection: Artist
All writers are discontent. That's because they're aware of a potential and believe they're not reaching it.Collection: Believe
Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective. The truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it.Collection: Perspective
People are people. Don't be afraid of them.Collection: People
The people you like when you meet them and while you know them, and the people you remember fondly, are invariably people who have a sense of comedy, not just a sense of humor.Collection: People
Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.Collection: Men