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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I’m George. You know, I’m with The New Yorker. I’m a liberal. I’m somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.

George Saunders

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More George Saunders Quotes

• 

  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.

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• 

  I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.

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• 

  I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I’ve done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society.

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• 

  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.

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• 

  I’ve always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.

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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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• 

  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.

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  IssuesKidsThinking
• 

  I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any time the person involved pretends that there’s not a cost to the choice.

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• 

  I’m fascinated with actors, and I’ve never quite understood the process.

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• 

  My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you’ve spent your day.

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• 

  I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I’m George. You know, I’m with The New Yorker. I’m a liberal. I’m somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.

  GEORGE SAUNDERS
  GuyNextWant
• 

  When I think about what fiction does morally, I’m happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities – sort of fragmented.

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• 

  The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He’s like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled “poor.” He doesn’t have any bad habits. He’s never cranky with his kids.

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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.

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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.

  GEORGE SAUNDERS
  BookKindNeedsStructure
• 

  In the moment of reading, the writer comes up to the surface and the reader comes up to the surface and they kiss, like two fish. That actually does happen.

  GEORGE SAUNDERS
  ActuallyKissingReadingTwo