Joe B > Joe's Quotes

“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.”
― William Saroyan

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

“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressivee--that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.”
― William Saroyan

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”
― William Saroyan, The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills

“I care so much about everything that I care about nothing”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn't like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn't stop, and she didn't like that at all.”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family: Stories

“I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.”
― William Saroyan

“Remember that every man is a variation of yourself”
― William Saroyan

“You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.”
― William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

“Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.”
― William Saroyan

“We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.”
― William Saroyan

“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.”
― William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

“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.”
― 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

“You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.”
― William Saroyan, Not Dying

“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.”
― William Saroyan

“The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.”
― William Saroyan

“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.”
― William Saroyan

“What do you mean, what's the matter with him? Nothing's the matter with him, everything's the matter with him, the same as it is with everybody else. He's just fine. He gets overwhelmed now and then, and he doesn't know how to say what he feels or means, so he cries and runs off a little, trying to find out where to go, for God's sake. Where can you go?”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family: Stories

“I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.”
― William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”
― 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.”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family: Stories

“Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family: Stories

“What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?”
― William Saroyan, Madness in the Family: Stories

“I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant”
― William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands

“People are people. Don't be afraid of them.”
― William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

“William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.”
― Tennessee Williams