When you talk about a reader being emotionally moved, a feeling of empathy, I think that comes out of that line-by-line respect for reader. That’s actually where it all comes from.
GEORGE SAUNDERSPositive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.
More George Saunders Quotes
-
-
I have finally realized that, you know, it’s not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
When I was a kid, I took ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘The Partridge Family’ very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Art is not some inessential frippery – it is the nation’s means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one’s nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Goodbye. I’m leaving because I’m bored.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Even when the faith goes away, there’s that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that’s kind of where art came in, after that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
There’s this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting – which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I find that the great artists I’ve met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn’t come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I’ve noticed that nowadays I’m doing a lot of stuff on the phone and on the computer, which I usually wouldn’t do earlier. And I can feel my brain being rewired:
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
When I wrote that [Donald] Trump piece, I had this uncomfortable experience of sensing a lot of things that were nascent, that I couldn’t quite articulate. And one of them was this move toward anti-intellectualism. An anti-love move, even.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Monologue is the most honest way to represent human beings.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
…There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end… Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I’ve decried consumerism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamourous reasonable voice.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes…but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I’m from a pretty working-class background, and I really worked hard in my life to eradicate those parts of myself that were stupidly trapped in that world.Those of us who come up that way made a series of choices to benefit ourselves and make ourselves more generous and open.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.
GEORGE SAUNDERS