Love of the streets is the love out of which I see deeply I love God, how near I come to the truth.

--1952 The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

--Sweet Drive, Sweet Chariot

About painter Rufino Tamayo: He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but weren't sure we saw. He paints for the dead, to remind us that--great good God, think of it--we're alive, and on our way to weather, from the sea to the hot interior, to watermelon there, a bird at night chasing a child past flowering cactus, a building on fire, barking dogs, and guitar-players not playing at eight o'clock, every picture saying, "Did you live, man? Were you alive back there for a little while? Good for you, good for you, and wasn't it hot, though? Wasn't it great when it was hot, though?"

--I Used to Believe I Had Forever Now I'm Not So Sure

Three times in my life I have been captured: by the orphanage, by school, and by the Army. I was four years in the orphanage, seven or eight in school, and three in the Army. Each seemed forever, though. But I'm mistaken. The fact is I was captured only once, when I was born, only that capture is also setting free, which is what this is actually all about. The free prisoner. I believed from the beginning of remembered experience that I was somebody with an incalculable potential for enlargement, somebody who both knew and could find out, upon whom demands could be made with the expectation of having them fulfilled.

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I felt at the same time, and pretty much constantly, that I was nothing in relation to Enormity, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. I was too vulnerable, too lacking in power, a thing of subtle reality, liable to be blown away without a moment's warning, a migrant with no meaning, no guide, no counsel, an entity in continuous transition, a growing thing whose stages of growth always went unnoticed, a fluid and flawed thing. Thus, there could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all. I did frequently rejoice in the recognition, but I may have gotten that from some of the Protestant hyms I had heard, and knew, and had sung, such as Joy to the World. The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about anybody else, including the one I knew it was supposed to be about, and good luck to him, too.

---Here Comes There Goes You Know Who

For further reading: William Saroyan by H.R. Floan (1966); William Saroyan by A. Saroyan (1983), William Saroyan by E.H. Foster (1984); Saroyan by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee (1984); William Saroyan, ed. by Leo Harmalian (1987); William Saroyan: A Study in the Shorter Fiction by E.H. Foster (1991); Critical Esays in William Saroyan, ed. by H. Keyishan (1995); William Saroyan by Jon Whimore (1995); Saroyan: A Biography by Lawrence Lee, Barry Gifford (1998, paperback); The World of William Saroyan by N. Balakian (1998)