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When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.

George Saunders

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

Firsts Heart Responsibility
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 SAUNDERS

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

Artist Jobs Thinking
With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Honest Nonfiction Trying
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Be Kind Truthful Trying
I have nothing. My model is I have nothing figured out, and I’m starting with some little nugget and hoping that it will talk back to me enough to let it grow.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

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

Air Stories Writing
When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Thinking Trying Years
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feels Levels Prose
I’m getting anxious, I’m getting more manic. Now, I’m an extreme case because I’m old and I’m overdoing it. But still, it’s really interesting that I can actually feel a change in my neurochemistry from this interaction with the technology.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Extreme Interesting Neurochemistry
Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Happens Used Writing
I know what it feels like to be in that middle and lower-middle class, and feel like the culture is passing you by; it translates into a great sense of personal frustration that can then morph into political frustration.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Class Frustration Political
I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that’s my issue.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Issues Kids 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
He was a father. That’s what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Dad Day Ease Fathers
You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it’s not totally satisfied.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Creating Expectations

When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.

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When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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