William Saroyan

"The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. 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." (from The William Saroyan Reader, 1958)


--I was introduced to William Saroyan by my friend Katie, and I'm terribly interested to read more of his work and especially watch his play, "The Time of Your Life" which is set in a bar during the Depression and about people just sitting around, searching for the meaning of life. It sounds like characters I would meet in Odysseus' casefiles.

“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