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The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

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

Moving People Thinking
I had an experience a few years ago where I was on a plane in which one of the engines went out. I couldn’t even remember my name. I was just repeating the word no over and over.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Names Remember Years
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
There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Continue Curiosity Long Losing Tired
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
I think something that I can’t name about our media has made us move away from that kind of specificity and that kind of curiosity.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Moving Names Thinking
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
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,
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Judging Thinking Trying
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

Actually Kissing Reading Two
As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Fiction God Kindness Life
I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Believe People Persistence
I’m very happy – if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I’m thrilled.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Littles Short Stories Story
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
I think about how I conceptualize the audience. The trick is that they’ve got to be smarter and more worldly than me. So as I’m revising, I’m keeping that in mind. I cannot condescend, even a little bit. Every single choice that I make is motivated by that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Choices Mind Thinking
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
I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Askance Form Really Scary

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More George Saunders Quotes