One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words

— William Saroyan

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

— William Saroyan

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

— William Saroyan

The idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.

— William Saroyan

The purpose of art is to give the traveling human race an improved map that shows the way to itself. If art isn't for *that*, what is it for?

— William Saroyan

The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.

— William Saroyan

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.

— William Saroyan

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy — the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.

— William Saroyan

This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.

— William Saroyan

What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.

— William Saroyan