I’m very happy – if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I’m thrilled.
GEORGE SAUNDERSI’m very happy – if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I’m thrilled.
GEORGE SAUNDERSI am always considering the reader. Although this is admittedly kind of odd: Which reader? On what day? In what mood? For me, that “reader” is actually just me, if I had never read the story before.
GEORGE SAUNDERSIf you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences – where things turn out better than you thought they would – ought to be in there somewhere, too.
GEORGE SAUNDERSI 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 SAUNDERSThe one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull – to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.
GEORGE SAUNDERSSocial media sometimes feels like a vehicle for one-dimensional sniping, more than true criticism.
GEORGE SAUNDERSIn 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 SAUNDERSAccording 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 SAUNDERSI understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
GEORGE SAUNDERSThat’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”
GEORGE SAUNDERSThe thing I’ve discovered that is a help is that there isn’t a simple virtue or a simple vice. They’re always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.
GEORGE SAUNDERSThere 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 SAUNDERSChekhov – shall I be blunt? – is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.
GEORGE SAUNDERSThere’s this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting – which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.
GEORGE SAUNDERSMy stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I’m a little lost.
GEORGE SAUNDERSIf you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.
GEORGE SAUNDERS