155 quotes
Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.
Three Times Three (1936)
What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.
The Armenian Writers : A Short Story (1954)
Chance meetings with living saints and sons of bitches goes on and on.
Chance Meetings (1978)
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
A man cannot write a poem or a story that will transform the whole nature of man, his reality and his truth, making them greater and nobler.
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.
The Armenian Writers : A Short Story (1954)
Jesus never said anything about absurdity, and he never indicated for one flash of time that he was aware of the preposterousness of his theory about himself.
Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)
I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant.
It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.
Letter to Robert E. Sherwood (1946)
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.
Inhale and Exhale (1936)
All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.
Three Times Three (1936)
There is little pride in writers. They know they are human and shall some day die and be forgotten. Knowing all this a writer is gentle and kindly where another man is severe and unkind.
The Declaration of War (1944)
One nickel, one secret. No exchanges, no refunds.
Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)
I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.
There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth.
Inhale and Exhale (1936)
It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.
Wars, for us, are either inevitable, or created. Whatever they are, they should not wholly vitiate art. What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.
Something About a Soldier (1940)
I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.