274 Quotes by William Saroyan

You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.

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

What we want to do is keep from hindering. If it's impossible to help, it's always possible to hinder.

But try to remember that a good man can never die. You will see your brother many times again-in the streets, at home, in all the places of the town. The person of a man may go, but the best part of him stays. It stays forever.

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.

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?

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.

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.

When Ulysses saw his brother, a wonderful thing happened to his face. All the terror left his eyes, because now he was home