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And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.

George Saunders

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Permanent Prayer Reading Real Suddenly
If I can be more efficient, I’m actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Intimacy Reader Respectful
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
The other thing that’s useful for me is this notion of the absolute versus the relative:if we walk out and it’s a beautiful morning, it’s only a beautiful morning because we don’t have a broken leg or hemorrhoids or something.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beautiful Broken Morning
The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Ideas Understanding
The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He’s like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled “poor.” He doesn’t have any bad habits. He’s never cranky with his kids.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Kids League Sports Sweet
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 natural criticizer – I prefer to like and praise and so on.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Critizixe Natural Praise
And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beauty Make Model Something
Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Remember Steps Victory
So, good news/bad news: good news that I’m progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Life Long Short
As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Fiction God Kindness Life
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feels Levels Prose
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

Becoming Graduation Life
The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Jobs Thinking
The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn’t damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Jobs Thinking

And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.

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And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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