I couldn't understand the language, I couldn't understand a word in the whole book, but it was somehow too eloquent to use for a fire. - William Saroyan

This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.

I have long known of Mr. Shaw, read his plays and prefaces, and loved him. I admire heroic effort. Accomplishment I love. What I am about to say is no invention, and I am putting it down for whatever it may be worth to the historian of literature and for the student of influences of men on men, and because it is true and must therefore be made known. As a boy, charging pell-mell through literature, reading everything I could lay hands on in the Public Library of Fresno, I found many men to whom I felt deeply grateful — especially Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, and H. L. Mencken — but the first man to whom I felt definitely related was George Bernard Shaw. This is a presumptuous or fatuous thing to mention, perhaps, but even so it must be mentioned.

Now, what is food? Why is food so important? Why do human beings need so much of it - three times a day, every day, year after year? Why do they live on food instead of on something else? Wouldn't it be better if human beings didn't need food at all? Wouldn't it be better if they could live on air, for instance? Get stronger and bigger by breathing sea air, or the air of the mountains, or the forests, or the meadows, or the vineyards and orchards, the wheat fields, the gardens all over the world? Wouldn't that be a better way for men to stay alive?
(spoken by 10-year-old Aram Saroyan)