“Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”
Statement to the Associated Press, five days before his death. (13 May 1981)
William Saroyan: Trending quotes
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“You must not be unkind, especially when it happens that you're right.”
William Saroyan book The Human Comedy
Source: The Human Comedy
“I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.”
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
“We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.”
William Saroyan book My Name Is Aram
"The Pomegranate Tree"
My Name Is Aram (1940)
“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Context: Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
Source: Not Dying: An Autobiographical Interlude
William Saroyan book The Human Comedy
Source: The Human Comedy (1943)
Context: Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but every life shall one day end. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. You shall know your father better as you grow and know yourself better. He is not dead, because you are alive. Time and accident, illness and weariness took his body, but already you have given it back to him, younger and more eager than ever. I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But 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.
Madness in the Family (1988)
Source: Madness in the Family: Stories
“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”
As quoted at a Broadway memorial tribute to Saroyan, reported in The New York Times (31 October 1983)
Source: Madness in the Family: Stories
“What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?”
Source: Madness in the Family: Stories
“The order I found was the order of disorder.”
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
“At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.”
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
William Saroyan book The Human Comedy
The Human Comedy (1943)
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)