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

George Saunders

I 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 SAUNDERS

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

Air Stories Writing
It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Attitude Desire Vignettes
I’m turning 58, and you get that kind of weird, old-guy feeling of you don’t have an infinite number of years left and if there’s anything you want to say or represent, it’s time to try it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Guy Numbers Years
The 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 SAUNDERS

Fiction Overall Same Time Trying 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
With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Honest Nonfiction Trying
Art is not some inessential frippery – it is the nation’s means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one’s nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Kind Literalness Mean Notion
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
Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Numbers People Thinking
I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, “Art, don’t come in here.” But that’s maybe a deeper question.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Real Wonder
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
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
The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it’s all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Firsts Rules Writing
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feels Levels Prose
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Driving Hands Wheels

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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