William Saroyan Quotes

To write for children at all is an act of faith.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

To me in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls were as really children as I was myself a child.

As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you.

When I was a kid, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, my stuffed animals - they were real. There is the tremendous suspension of disbelief that you have as a child. It's harder as an adult.

He [Peter Pan] is a metaphor for dreams and faith.

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.

Is not Jesus pointing to children even as models for grownups?

When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

Child of the pure, unclouded brow and dreaming eyes of wonder.

I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. Ah, if an adult could only act as a child does with that insane, playing-at-toy- soldiers concentration!

When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there's nothing easier to lose than playfulness.

They looked like two children," she told me. And that thought frightened her, because she'd always felt that only children are capable of everything.

Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything?

Many children fly like birds, guess other people's dreams, and speak with ghosts, but ... they all outgrow it when they lose their innocence.

It is the childlike part of us that produces works of the imagination. When we were children time passed so slow with us that we seemed to have time for everything.

Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.

Children are the closest we have to wisdom and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

No matter how sophisticated our lives may be we need to think of ourselves as creative children.

Be a child again. Flirt. Giggle. Dip your cookies in your milk. Take a nap. Say you're sorry if you hurt someone. Chase a butterfly. Be a child again.

If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.