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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.

— William Saroyan The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

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Life

More quotes by William Saroyan

I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

The Flashing Dragonfly (1973)

Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?

He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is.

The William Saroyan Reader (1958)

I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death.

Inhale and Exhale (1936)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Saroyan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.