I’ve seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.
GEORGE SAUNDERSIf I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.
More George Saunders Quotes
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An artist’s job is to be interested in things as they are.
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You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it’s not totally satisfied.
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One of the things I noticed about the Trump supporters was a lot of projected fear. I can’t tell you how many times a conversation went like this: “We’ve got to stop these immigrants, because it’s terrible.” I’d say, “Okay, what personally have you observed about this?” And there would be basically nothing in that box. And I’d say, “Where’d you get your information?” thinking they were going to say Fox. But they would always say, “Well, I get my information from all kinds of sources.” Fox is kind of center-left to a lot of people now.
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One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there’s a quality of real fearlessness in it – you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.
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Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.
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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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The scariest thought in the world is that someday I’ll wake up and realize I’ve been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual.
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I read Rand and thought, “I want to be one of the earth movers, the scientific people who power the world. I don’t want to be one of these lisping liberal artsy leeches.” So I was working against my actual abilities.
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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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I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn’t do drugs or drink, and this was the ’70s. I didn’t like the loss of control. Which isn’t exactly right, because I didn’t know what happened when you did drugs.
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When I was a kid, I took ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘The Partridge Family’ very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus.
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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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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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I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
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Social media sometimes feels like a vehicle for one-dimensional sniping, more than true criticism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS