My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you’re really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces – trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.
GEORGE SAUNDERSOur first responsibility in all things is to preserve our goodness of heart – then and only then act.
More George Saunders Quotes
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You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
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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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I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
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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.
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I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.
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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.
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We’re in the transition between birth and death. But the one that people often know about is the transition between the moment of death and whatever comes next, so reincarnation or heaven or hell.
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If a writer understands his work as something that originates with him but then, with any luck, gets away from him, then what he needs is someone who can grasp the potential of the piece and lead him to that higher ground.
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The scariest thought in the world is that someday I’ll wake up and realize I’ve been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual.
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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.
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Someone told me once – I mean I said, “Is it ok that I don’t really know what the three-act structure is?” And he said, “It’s basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree; Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him; Act 3: he gets down.”
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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.
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My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to be, say, assertive. If I am nice and maybe too passive, I find that easier to live with.
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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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An artist’s job is to be interested in things as they are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS







