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Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

George Saunders

As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come at the end that I hadn’t really planned or planted.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Feelings Surprise
What’s really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Helping Technology Way
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Acceptance Emotional Self
At times, they’re so Right and I’m so Left, we agree.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Agree Left Right
Suddenly absurdism wasn’t an intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the way that wealth was begetting wealth, wealth was begetting comfort – and that the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was the erosion of grace.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Erosion Grace Intellectual
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feels Levels Prose
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

Long Nice Running
Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Happens Used Writing
One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there’s a quality of real fearlessness in it – you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Careers Challenges Real
…smile first, then speak.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Smile Speak
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

America Nuts Voice
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Continue Curiosity Long Losing Tired
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

Ideas Trying Writing
Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Doors Fiction Energetically Long
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
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Birth Heaven People

Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

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Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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