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Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?

George Saunders

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Destroy Forth Within You
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Appreciating Fear Love Mistakes People
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Creating Expectations
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Greek Kids World
Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Compassion Earth Reason
When you talk about a reader being emotionally moved, a feeling of empathy, I think that comes out of that line-by-line respect for reader. That’s actually where it all comes from.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Empathy Feelings Thinking
…smile first, then speak.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Smile Speak
The other thing that’s useful for me is this notion of the absolute versus the relative:if we walk out and it’s a beautiful morning, it’s only a beautiful morning because we don’t have a broken leg or hemorrhoids or something.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beautiful Broken Morning
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Acceptance Emotional Self
[Writing] is almost like those boats that sit really low in the water; they look kind of ugly. And then you get one of them up to 80 miles an hour and the hull comes up, and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m okay with that for myself.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beautiful Water Writing
I’m not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become ‘large-print’ books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Country Home
I do find the values in A Christmas Carol significant. It is important not to be mean and stingy and not to give up love for money.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Giving Important Mean Up
I’m fascinated with actors, and I’ve never quite understood the process.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Actors Never Quit Process
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
And I have finally realized that, you know, it’s not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it – which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Mean Writing
If I can be more efficient, I’m actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Intimacy Reader Respectful

Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?

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Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?

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