When we talk about adversity, this is the moment when character really gets tested. When things aren’t going the way you want and you can’t see anyway that they’re going to go the way you want. That’s kind of when those old virtues really become valuable and vulnerable also.
GEORGE SAUNDERSI 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.”
More George Saunders Quotes
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If you’re going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it’s in the story or in the world, there’s a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
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“Kindness” can mean a lot of different things. In this case, I felt I had to present his [Donald Trump’s] supporters in as fair a light as possible – many of them hadn’t been interviewed before and that entailed some interviewer-courtesy in the editing and so on.
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I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn’t do drugs or drink, and this was the ’70s. I didn’t like the loss of control. Which isn’t exactly right, because I didn’t know what happened when you did drugs.
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In my case, when I am trying to be “kind” I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.
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I had an experience a few years ago where I was on a plane in which one of the engines went out. I couldn’t even remember my name. I was just repeating the word no over and over.
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Nostalgia is, ‘Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?’
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Whatever happens when we die, it would be really weird if it was what we had expected. Even if you were a lifelong Christian believer, it would be kind of weird if there actually were pearly gates.
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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.
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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.
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I’m not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I’m just trusting that, if I’m working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.
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I read to make myself feel awake.
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My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you’ve spent your day.
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He was a father. That’s what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.
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The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it’s all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.
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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