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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 Saunders

I’m very happy – if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I’m thrilled.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Littles Short Stories Story
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Numbers People Thinking
When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average and is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Average Culture Guy
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Arrows Drug Loss
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
It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Attitude Desire Vignettes
You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it’s not totally satisfied.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Creating Expectations
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
Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Crazy Goodbye Mad
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
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
I read to make myself feel awake.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Awake Feels Myself
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Names Remember Years
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Ground Higher Luck Needs
Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer’s job is: go out and find some stuff to love.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Jobs Stuff Young Writers
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Guy Rotten Way

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More George Saunders Quotes