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 SAUNDERSSomeone 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.”
More George Saunders Quotes
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Social media sometimes feels like a vehicle for one-dimensional sniping, more than true criticism.
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I’m fascinated with actors, and I’ve never quite understood the process.
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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.”
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There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.
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I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, “Art, don’t come in here.” But that’s maybe a deeper question.
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Art is not some inessential frippery – it is the nation’s means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one’s nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.
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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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The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He’s like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled “poor.” He doesn’t have any bad habits. He’s never cranky with his kids.
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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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I’m a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psychological apparatus of Americans.
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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.
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At times, they’re so Right and I’m so Left, we agree.
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And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.
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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.
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The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn’t damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
GEORGE SAUNDERS