As quoted in "Saroyan's Literary Quarantine" http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_2.html by Peter H. King, in The Los Angeles Times (26 March 1997).

“Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.”

William Saroyan

Of his father
Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

“Many friendships are swift and accidental, the result of a chance meeting, followed by a permanent separation.”

William Saroyan

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“Merely to survive is to keep the hope greatness, accuracy, and the grace alive.”

William Saroyan

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“The business of polishing my shoes satisfies my soul.”

William Saroyan

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

“The only thing I can talk about is the cold because it is the only thing going on today.”

William Saroyan

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day

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

William Saroyan

The Resurrection of a Life (1935)

“The boy on the Oakland porch goes to sleep upon the universe of ice and wakes up and remembers the death of his father and mother, and sees the sun.”

William Saroyan

Obituaries (1979)

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.”

William Saroyan

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“The weakness of art is that great poems do not ennoble politics, as they certainly should, and the trouble with politics is that they inspire poets only to mockery and scorn.”

William Saroyan

Something About a Soldier (1940)