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That’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”

George Saunders

In the moment of reading, the writer comes up to the surface and the reader comes up to the surface and they kiss, like two fish. That actually does happen.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Actually Kissing Reading Two
In the absolute sense – kind of from the God’s-eye view – God might feel like, “I made this thing that has all of that in it, all the horror and all the beauty.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Eye might Views
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
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Aware Stories Want World
So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Advice Corny Littles
If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences – where things turn out better than you thought they would – ought to be in there somewhere, too.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Fiction Thinking World
If you have a friend, what’s the best way you can experience her beauty? It’s to really accept her. She’s weird in this way,
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Judging Thinking Trying
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
You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Good Laughing Times
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
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

Greek Kids World
…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

Home Men Pieces
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
Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Compassion Earth Reason
Our first responsibility in all things is to preserve our goodness of heart – then and only then act.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Heart Responsibility
I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that’s my issue.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Issues Kids Thinking

That’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”

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That’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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