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 SAUNDERSI think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
More George Saunders Quotes
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I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
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You can say you’re a liberal and everybody laughs and it’s a good time.
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Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
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I always cheerfully say, “Well, you know, the species is adapting, and whatever it needs to do, it’ll do,” but I do think it’s maybe a little bit alarming.
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When you’re embarking on a piece of writing, the anxiety is just too much, especially when you’re young and you’re trying to figure out if this is your thing or not. You feel like, “if I don’t write a good story, I gotta get going to law school!”
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What’s really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
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It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.
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Nostalgia is, ‘Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?’
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So, good news/bad news: good news that I’m progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.
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[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.
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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.
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I’m turning 58, and you get that kind of weird, old-guy feeling of you don’t have an infinite number of years left and if there’s anything you want to say or represent, it’s time to try it.
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I have finally realized that, you know, it’s not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
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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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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