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Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time.

George Saunders

Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it – every word has a big question mark over it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Remember Thinking Writing
I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, “Art, don’t come in here.” But that’s maybe a deeper question.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Real Wonder
My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I’m a little lost.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Littles Stories Wind
I’m not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become ‘large-print’ books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Country Home
I think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue – having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly – in a good way.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Kindness Simple Thinking
I’ve seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Process Trying Way
Social media sometimes feels like a vehicle for one-dimensional sniping, more than true criticism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Criticism Media Sniping
For me, when I’m coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it’s almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Driving Hands Wheels
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “Yuck, yuck, yuck, I’m gonna be evil.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Morning People Thinking
When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Thinking Trying Years
I read Rand and thought, “I want to be one of the earth movers, the scientific people who power the world. I don’t want to be one of these lisping liberal artsy leeches.” So I was working against my actual abilities.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Leeches People World
Chekhov – shall I be blunt? – is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Chekhov Stories Story Writers
One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it’s going to, we can just relax and do it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Anxiety Relax Stories
I’m a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psychological apparatus of Americans.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Country People School
Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Harsh Life Stories
Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Advice Confusion Medicine

Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time.

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Popular Authors

Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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