Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.
This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.
You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.
What do you mean, what’s the matter with him? Nothing’s the matter with him, everything’s the matter with him, the same as it is with everybody else. He’s just fine. He gets overwhelmed now and then, and he doesn’t know how to say what he feels or means, so he cries and runs off a little, trying to find out where to go, for God’s sake. Where can you go?
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 am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man’s spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?
I want time in which to walk quietly over the earth, among uncrazed men. I want time in which to build a house, inhabit it, create a past with meaning. I want time in which to seek and find love. I want time. I want to be unhurried, uncaught. I want time in which to sleep and waken, in which to dream the truth of my being on earth. Time.
One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words.
I am an estranged man, said the liar: estranged from myself, from my family, my fellow man, my country, my world, my time, and my culture. I am not estranged from God, although I am a disbeliever in everything about God excepting God indefinable, inside all and careless of all.
What we want to do is keep from hindering. If it’s impossible to help, it’s always possible to hinder.
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.
Think before you speak, think twice before you shout, think three times before you go mad.
Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.
My uncle Khosrove became very irritated and shouted, It’s no harm. What is the loss of a horse? Haven’t we all lost the homeland? What is this crying over a horse?
Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do useful things whenever it is possible or necessary to do them, we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared. Armenians are too vital to be permitted to throw themselves away in neutrality, comfort, well-being, satisfaction, and so on and so forth.
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.
As for the matter of what we may expect from one another, that is indeed something we are eager to learn – all of us, all our lives, but I wonder, do we ever learn, do we ever really find out?
Everything is changed for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the world has always been full of that loneliness.
At the corner she looked suddenly far away and saw the street go straight out to the sky. She looked up to the sky and saw it go everywhere, and my, she thought, how large it is, what a large place it is. What a large world. So many different people, so many different places, close by and far away, people everywhere, places everywhere. What a fine place to be in.
All I can say is that there is indeed a crisis here. We cannot speak to one another in a meaningful way, every one of us is a leader, a general of the army, a king, a president, the greatest thinker of all time, and so on and so forth. This is the curse of the Armenian race.
When I think of the good things still to be written I am glad, for there is no end to them, and I know I myself shall write some of them.