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As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come at the end that I hadn’t really planned or planted.

George Saunders

Our first responsibility in all things is to preserve our goodness of heart – then and only then act.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Firsts Heart Responsibility
You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Good Laughing Times
I’ve seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Process Trying Way
I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that’s my issue.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Issues Kids Thinking
Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Action Humans Light
What’s really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Helping Technology Way
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
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feels Levels Prose
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
When somebody you’ve known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you’re trying to re-create in fiction is that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Thinking Trying Years
Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Remember Steps Victory
The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Denial Maturity Triumph
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
That’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Add Figures Way
So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Advice Corny Littles
Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Doors Fiction Energetically Long

As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come at the end that I hadn’t really planned or planted.

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As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come at the end that I hadn’t really planned or planted.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More George Saunders Quotes