William Saroyan Quotes

The single worst moment of my life... was the moment I was born.

Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.

Everyone faces the challenge of finding meaning to their suffering.

You don't have to go to the kings and queens of the earth - I think the Greeks and Elizabethans did this because it was a logical concept - but every human being is in enormous conflict about something, even if it's how to get to work in the morning and all of that.

I was on some bad teams, and I played bad as a young player, certainly, at times. And that all mounts. Yeah, that all mounts. The perception. Everything that goes into that. And so, yeah, I think to kind of get over the hump of that, to change perception, it can be difficult. It's a tall task. And it takes a long time.

I went through this kind of existential crisis. I was going through a breakup; I tore my ACL and my meniscus and had to have surgery, so I was out of school for a few months. Then my computer crashed, which was, like, my whole life. So when I came out of it, I started making music that, I think, was the most true to me.

It's a lot harder to write a story that's compelling about identity and sense of self without some villain in the room.

I may be the wrong person for my life.

The important thing is to firmly fix our gaze on our own weaknesses, not run away from them, but to battle them head-on and establish a solid self that nothing can sway. Hardships forge and polish our lives, so that eventually they shine with brilliant fortune and benefit. If left in its raw, unpolished form, even the most magnificent gem will not sparkle. The same applies to our lives.

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

Nothing in my life is going right, right now and there's got to be a reason for that. I think that God is trying to get my attention to tell me that this is going to end very, very badly if I don't walk away from it.

Being born was the worse and the first mistake I ever made. The doctor didn't spank me, he just slapped me in the face.

I reached a point in my life where I didn't really like who I was.I was married to an amazing woman. I had children, and yet there was frustration.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

I haven't left a mark on the world, but is that so bad? Considering how deeply the world has marked me?

Two places in this world make it impossible for a man to escape from himself: a battlefield and a prison cell.

life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

It's not a mid-life crisis. It's a mid-life disaster. A mid-life crisis is when you wake up with everything and you go "I have everything but I'm still unhappy."

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

Find the meaning behind whatever it is you're going through because everybody's got something.

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself!

Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

I would not give my first 15 years to my worst enemy, and I don't even have a worst enemy.

The crisis is not out there in the world, it is within our own consciousness.

I had so many secrets and so much social repression throughout my life. I guess I'm just a shy person and feel like my true self is unacceptable to most people.