I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn’t do drugs or drink, and this was the ’70s. I didn’t like the loss of control. Which isn’t exactly right, because I didn’t know what happened when you did drugs.
GEORGE SAUNDERSI read to make myself feel awake.
More George Saunders Quotes
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…smile first, then speak.
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There’s this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting – which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.
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Based on the experience of my life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.
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The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.
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As a writer I’m essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
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I’m very happy – if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I’m thrilled.
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I don’t feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
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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.
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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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A culture’s ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.
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Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.
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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 think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue – having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly – in a good way.
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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.
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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