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Quotes from The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze — William Saroyan

1908–1981 Armenia

← All quotes by William Saroyan

10 quotes

The only thing I can talk about is the cold because it is the only thing going on today.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

This was such bad writing that it was good.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

It seemed to me that I had no right to burn a book I hadn't even read.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

I couldn't understand the language, I couldn't understand a word in the whole book, but it was somehow too eloquent to use for a fire.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

What I intended to do was to burn a half dozen of my books and keep warm, so that I could write my story, but when I looked around for titles to burn, I couldn't find any.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Saroyan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.