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Places Where I've Done Time

Book by William Saroyan · 12 quotes · Books, Libraries, Mexico

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Places Where I've Done Time Quotes

“All of my time, the very earliest, the latest, the most recent, all of it, every instant of it has never been totally free of sorrow. The sorrow was second nature or innate or inevitable, it was there all the time: it gave a thoughtful brooding cast to the visage. There was almost never a complaint, because complaining was in bad taste, although that did not prevent me from having definite if private opinions about people who were plainly sons of bitches. Also there at all times, side by side with the sorrow, or possibly even a part of it, was humor--an awareness of air, light, sounds, smells, and unaccountable ideas.”

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“He had been in New York the whole year managing his father's winery and office in lower Manhattan, but now he'd come home by train for Christmas--and the world was wonderful. Three thousand miles was nothing, you got on a train, you had your own private little room, you changed at Chicago, you ate great meals in the diner, you read mystery stories and newspapers in the club car, and then all of a sudden there you were back in Fresno, and there everybody was, standing on the station platform waiting for you. Who could ask for anything more?”

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“One can seldom look at terrain and think of it, "This is France," for instance, but in looking at the landscape south of Nogales I had the feeling unmistakably. The land itself was Mexican. It was dry, sandy, rocky, hot, and heavy with many kinds of desert plants. It had repose, dignity, and a sense of the fierceness of survival--not just human survival, but all survival, animal, insect, bird, and plant. And then, when the people of Mexico appeared beyond the train windows, this isolation, struggle, and heroism was clearly marked in their faces.”

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“I went to the typing class every morning for almost two full months before typing became automatic. If I thought a word, my fingers typed it. If I thought a sentence, my fingers typed the sentence. If I had in mind a whole paragraph, my fingers kept right up with my thinking. That was one of the big achievements of my early life in Fresno. And I loved the break-through and the skill that came with it. Nothing could stop me now.”

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“Well, some places are happy places and some aren't, and that's pretty much all you can say about the matter. But if you think on it, you soon discover that no place is totally without happiness, possibly not even the grave--but we're not going there, you and I. When we die, it just isn't going to be us. Coming around the stretch, boxed in, we're going to find a little opening, and before anybody knows what's going on, we're going to ease through, and move out, and come down to the wire all alone, and go away, hollering and laughing, uncaught again, again uncatchable.”

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“After I was settled, I walked down the hill and came to a place with fine gardens inside a high metal picket fence, and as the gate was open I went in. It was the Bahai Temple. It was the Main Office of International Bahai, a very nice religion without much of an image, with no hero, or at any rate no hysterical hero, no big show-biz trial, no fancy parables, no crucifixion, just a man who sincerely believed there was a nice way for everybody to live.”

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