black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to be, say, assertive. If I am nice and maybe too passive, I find that easier to live with.

George Saunders

The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Jobs Thinking
Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Crazy Goodbye Mad
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Becoming Graduation Life
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
Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it’s super-sized because there’s no bodily damper on it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Buddhist Ideas Mind
I think something that I can’t name about our media has made us move away from that kind of specificity and that kind of curiosity.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Moving Names Thinking
I’m from a pretty working-class background, and I really worked hard in my life to eradicate those parts of myself that were stupidly trapped in that world.Those of us who come up that way made a series of choices to benefit ourselves and make ourselves more generous and open.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Benefits Choices Class
You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Good Laughing Times
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Country People School
So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Advice Corny Littles
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
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “Yuck, yuck, yuck, I’m gonna be evil.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Morning People Thinking
Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Compassion Earth Reason
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
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 actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Believe People Persistence

My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to be, say, assertive. If I am nice and maybe too passive, I find that easier to live with.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to be, say, assertive. If I am nice and maybe too passive, I find that easier to live with.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More George Saunders Quotes