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 SAUNDERSI 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.
More George Saunders Quotes
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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,
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The book says [Lincoln in the Bardo],”I really need this sci-fi device of a ghost inhabiting another person.” You say okay kind of begrudgingly. So the structure seemed informed by need and efficiency.
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When you’re embarking on a piece of writing, the anxiety is just too much, especially when you’re young and you’re trying to figure out if this is your thing or not. You feel like, “if I don’t write a good story, I gotta get going to law school!”
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An artist’s job is to be interested in things as they are.
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It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.
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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.
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I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it’s a nice way to neutralize that polarization.
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I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
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The one thing I noticed retroactively was that the energy at those Trump rallies was off the charts compared to the Hillary Clinton rallies. The Bernie Sanders energy was as good, gentler, but there was a real passion there.
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I think about how I conceptualize the audience. The trick is that they’ve got to be smarter and more worldly than me. So as I’m revising, I’m keeping that in mind. I cannot condescend, even a little bit. Every single choice that I make is motivated by that.
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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.
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Even when the faith goes away, there’s that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that’s kind of where art came in, after that.
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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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Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.
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It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.
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