"What I intended to do was to burn a half dozen of my books and keep warm, so that I could write my story, but when I looked around for titles to burn, I couldn't find any."

William Saroyan Literature See all quotes by William Saroyan →

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“Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.”

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”

“Boredom was the plague of my childhood. While I was at the orphanage, the boredom came from being in a place I did not wish to be. I was bored. I was bored the entire four years I was there.”

“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.”

“The bicycle is a city thing, virtually useless anywhere excepting on a pavement or hard surface of some kind. Without the road it would never have been invented. It is a little mad, both in design and purpose. Two wheels held together in a frame, with a simple mechanical system enabling a forward movement for one person.”

“To remember something or to invent something, it comes to the same thing.”

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"I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fre…"

— Florence Nightingale

Medicine1820–1910

#writing

"The little hen poked her head up from the hole she had dug and looked at the crowing rooster. She thoughtfully looked from the rooster in the window sill to the high row of nests that rose against the…"

— Meindert DeJong

Literature1906–1991

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"Another hallway led to a green steel door. "This is the execution chamber," the officer said. "The day of the execution, we take the man through this door." He opened the green door, and we blinked at…"

— Tommy Franks

Military1945

#time

"Rajinikanth’s story is straight out of the movies: Boy from the wrong side of the tracks makes it big. Born Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, he had a wild childhood and even wilder youth where his pranks got him …"

— Rajinikanth

Entertainment1950

#life