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 SAUNDERSArt 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.
More George Saunders Quotes
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In my case, when I am trying to be “kind” I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.
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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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I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I’m George. You know, I’m with The New Yorker. I’m a liberal. I’m somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.
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You don’t want to be that parent – the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks – especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.
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According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.
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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:
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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,
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I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them.
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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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I was trained in seismic prospecting. We’d drill a deep hole and put dynamite in the bottom and blow it up remotely, which would give you a cross-sectional picture of the subsurface, which tells you where to drill.
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The book says [Lincoln in the Bardo],”I really need this sci-fi device of a ghost inhabiting another person.” You say okay kind of begrudgingly. So the structure seemed informed by need and efficiency.
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Compassion doesn’t have to be weak or enabling; it can also be quite bold.
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As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.
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I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
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The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it’s all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.
GEORGE SAUNDERS