“All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.”

—  William Saroyan

Three Times Three (1936)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy." by William Saroyan?
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 190
American writer 1908–1981

Related quotes

“Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Into the Silence.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Ernest Hemingway photo

“I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

Part I, Ch. 1
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Samuel Beckett photo

“I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940 (2009), p. 362
Context: I think the next little bit of excitement is flying. I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.

Ron English photo

“Dreaming is easy; I can do it in my sleep.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) English author
Graham Greene photo

“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Mark Twain photo

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Ray Bradbury photo

“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer
James Boswell photo

“I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.”

James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish lawyer, diarist and author

Quoting Samuel Johnson (16 August 1773)
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

Charles Brockden Brown photo

“In the midst of my despair, I do not disdain to contribute what little I can for the benefit of mankind.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
Context: I feel little reluctance in complying with your request. You know not fully the cause of my sorrows. You are a stranger to the depth of my distresses. Hence your efforts at consolation must necessarily fail. Yet the tale that I am going to tell is not intended as a claim upon your sympathy. In the midst of my despair, I do not disdain to contribute what little I can for the benefit of mankind. I acknowledge your right to be informed of the events that have lately happened in my family. Make what use of the tale you shall think proper. If it be communicated to the world, it will inculcate the dusty of avoiding deceit. It will exemplify the force of early impressions, and show the immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect discipline.

Related topics