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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

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
I love story-writing because I can (more or less, on occasion) actually DO it. That’s really the truth. I like the idea that a story is sort of a site for making cool language effects – a site for celebrating language, and, therefore, the world.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Challenges Ideas Writing
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
My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you’ve spent your day.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Empathy Heart
I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Air Stories Writing
At times, they’re so Right and I’m so Left, we agree.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Agree Left Right
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Deep Dynamite Remotely
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Aware Stories Want World
An artist’s job is to be interested in things as they are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Interested Jobs
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Advice Confusion Medicine
…smile first, then speak.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Smile Speak
When I was a kid, I took ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘The Partridge Family’ very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Greek Kids World
Your first responsibility is to yourself and to your own goodness of heart.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Heart Responsibility
So, good news/bad news: good news that I’m progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Life Long Short
And I have finally realized that, you know, it’s not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it – which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Mean Writing
A culture’s ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

People Survival Watches

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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