One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.
Interpretation
Life's challenges and the inevitability of death can enhance our experiences of joy and love.
William Saroyan's quote reflects on the inevitability of death and the sorrow that often accompanies it. However, he suggests that this awareness can actually deepen our appreciation for life, making our joyful experiences and loving connections more meaningful. The contrast between glumness and joy serves to remind us that the realities of life and death coexist, and understanding this can enrich our emotional experiences.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech at a memorial service to celebrate the lives of those who have passed.
The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.
San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.
I care so much about everything that I care about nothing.
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?
Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.
It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books.
At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.
I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.
It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.
You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim
My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.
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