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Success makes opportunities and so many of those “opportunities” are actually exemptions – from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.

George Saunders

For me, when I’m coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it’s almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Driving Hands Wheels
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

Art Kind Space
Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Doors Fiction Energetically Long
I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Askance Form Really Scary
With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Honest Nonfiction Trying
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
All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Meanness Sake Tradition
Goodbye. I’m leaving because I’m bored.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Bored Goodbye Leaving
The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in which we’re ruled by big talking turds, it doesn’t mean that we are. So you shouldn’t feel depressed.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Depressed Hopeful Mean Talking
I know what it feels like to be in that middle and lower-middle class, and feel like the culture is passing you by; it translates into a great sense of personal frustration that can then morph into political frustration.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Class Frustration Political
Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Generous Life Short Trying
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

Interesting Phones Technology
As a writer I’m essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Impression Stories Trying
Success makes opportunities and so many of those “opportunities” are actually exemptions – from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Hardship Opportunity Struggle
I have nothing. My model is I have nothing figured out, and I’m starting with some little nugget and hoping that it will talk back to me enough to let it grow.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Enough Littles Nuggets
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Kindness Simple Thinking

Success makes opportunities and so many of those “opportunities” are actually exemptions – from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.

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Success makes opportunities and so many of those “opportunities” are actually exemptions – from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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