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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

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
Monologue is the most honest way to represent human beings.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Honest Monologues Way
Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer’s job is: go out and find some stuff to love.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Jobs Stuff Young Writers
One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there’s a quality of real fearlessness in it – you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Careers Challenges Real
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

Book Kind Needs Structure
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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Guy Numbers Years
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
Someone told me once – I mean I said, “Is it ok that I don’t really know what the three-act structure is?” And he said, “It’s basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree; Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him; Act 3: he gets down.”
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Guy Mean People
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

Extreme Interesting Neurochemistry
Even when the faith goes away, there’s that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that’s kind of where art came in, after that.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Art Kind Space
Compassion doesn’t have to be weak or enabling; it can also be quite bold.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Compassion Enabling Weak
The one thing I noticed retroactively was that the energy at those Trump rallies was off the charts compared to the Hillary Clinton rallies. The Bernie Sanders energy was as good, gentler, but there was a real passion there.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Energy Passion Real
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
There’s a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him – or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn’t have anything to do with his ego or his desire to ‘be a good writer’.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Feelings Nice Writing
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
And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them – I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beauty Make Model Something

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More George Saunders Quotes

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.