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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

The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn’t damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Jobs Thinking
I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Arise Art Future People Satisfy Thinking
If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Destroy Forth Within You
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
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 that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Compassion Play Thinking
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
All along, my mantra was: Don’t write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Contribute Emotion Service Writing
There’s a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him – or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn’t have anything to do with his ego or his desire to ‘be a good writer’.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feelings Nice Writing
If you have a friend, what’s the best way you can experience her beauty? It’s to really accept her. She’s weird in this way,
GEORGE SAUNDERS

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

Air Stories Writing
As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Fiction God Kindness Life
I want something a little more confident and more sure of the values that we’re defending, which are the old ones, love and empathy and patience and tolerance and civility. Not to get into politics or anything.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

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

Artist Jobs Thinking
Our first responsibility in all things is to preserve our goodness of heart – then and only then act.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Heart Responsibility

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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