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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

In the absolute sense – kind of from the God’s-eye view – God might feel like, “I made this thing that has all of that in it, all the horror and all the beauty.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Eye might Views
…smile first, then speak.
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Firsts Smile Speak
To understand any plea for further consideration of a group you don’t know anything about to be some form of, quote, political correctness. These things are bubbling right under us.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Consideration Groups Political
You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
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Good Laughing Times
Based on the experience of my life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Agree Broke Parks
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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Action Humans Light
For me, when I’m coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it’s almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.
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Driving Hands Wheels
One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it’s going to, we can just relax and do it.
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Anxiety Relax Stories
An artist’s job is to be interested in things as they are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Interested Jobs
There’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.
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Ceiling Culture Self
As a writer I’m essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Impression Stories Trying
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
When we talk about adversity, this is the moment when character really gets tested. When things aren’t going the way you want and you can’t see anyway that they’re going to go the way you want. That’s kind of when those old virtues really become valuable and vulnerable also.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Adversity Character Want
I think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue – having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly – in a good way.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Kindness Simple Thinking
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Permanent Prayer Reading Real Suddenly
The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.
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Artist Ideas Understanding
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
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Feels Levels Prose
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
Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.
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Empathy Feelings Guilt
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
I find that the great artists I’ve met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn’t come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Energy People
One way or the other; whether you get it or don’t get it, there’s a cost. That’s just basic responsibility, to admit that there’s a cost. And the bad karma is when you pretend that the thing is free.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Free One Responsinbty Thing Time
Nostalgia is, ‘Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?’
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Hey Nostalgia Remember
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.
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Becoming Graduation Life
Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.
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Remember Steps Victory
I’m not a natural criticizer – I prefer to like and praise and so on.
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Critizixe Natural Praise
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

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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