274 Quotes by William Saroyan

In the time of your life, live – so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed... In the time of your life, live – so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

I thought a fellow would never cry when he got to be grown up, but it seems as if that’s when a fellow starts, because that’s when a fellow starts finding out about things.

The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn’t dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.

She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn’t like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn’t stop, and she didn’t like that at all.

If I want to do anything, I want to speak a more universal language.

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself...

All of the sudden,” he said, “I feel different – not like I ever felt before. Even when Papa died I didn’t feel this way. In two days everything is changed. I’m lonely and I don’t now what I’m lonely for.

One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you’re lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.

We didn’t say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.