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 SAUNDERSThe 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.
More George Saunders Quotes
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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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There’s this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting – which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.
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When you’re embarking on a piece of writing, the anxiety is just too much, especially when you’re young and you’re trying to figure out if this is your thing or not. You feel like, “if I don’t write a good story, I gotta get going to law school!”
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Since, 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 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.
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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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I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any time the person involved pretends that there’s not a cost to the choice.
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When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
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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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If you’re going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it’s in the story or in the world, there’s a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
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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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Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: ‘Oh, I should tweet about this.’
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Goodbye. I’m leaving because I’m bored.
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The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.
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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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS