“I was four years old, and had long since reasoned that it was folly to expect the big things from people.”

— William Saroyan, Places Where I've Done Time, 1972

About William Saroyan

1908 – 1981

American writer, author of "The Human Comedy".

“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell.”

“All things lie dark in possibility.”

“Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.”

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

“Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”

“No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.”