So, good news/bad news: good news that I’m progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.
GEORGE SAUNDERSWhatever happens when we die, it would be really weird if it was what we had expected. Even if you were a lifelong Christian believer, it would be kind of weird if there actually were pearly gates.
More George Saunders Quotes
-
-
When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average and is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
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 -
He was a father. That’s what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
We have to move toward specificity, intelligence, facts, proof, and mutual affection. What I think people have to do now is be very, very assertive about the utter essentiality of intellectual undertakings.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you’re really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces – trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
What’s really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
In the absolute sense – kind of from the God’s-eye view – God might feel like, “I made this thing that has all of that in it, all the horror and all the beauty.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
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 -
I’m a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psychological apparatus of Americans.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
Early on, a story’s meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it – and so things have to be ramped up.
GEORGE SAUNDERS -
I’m getting anxious, I’m getting more manic. Now, I’m an extreme case because I’m old and I’m overdoing it. But still, it’s really interesting that I can actually feel a change in my neurochemistry from this interaction with the technology.
GEORGE SAUNDERS