Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.
William SaroyanI became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.
William SaroyanI always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.
William SaroyanI can't decide for you whether or not you have got to write, but if anything in the world, war, or pestilence, or famine, or private hunger, or anything, can stop you from writing, then don't write . . . because if anything can even begin to keep you from writing you aren't a writer and you'll be in a hell of a mess until you find out. If you are a writer, you'll still be in a hell of a mess, but you'll have better reasons.
William Saroyan