George Saunders Quotes

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Permanent Prayer Reading Real Suddenly
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

Country People School
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
All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.
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Meanness Sake Tradition
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.
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Artist Ideas Understanding
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
I find that the great artists I’ve met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn’t come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Artist Energy 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
The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in which we’re ruled by big talking turds, it doesn’t mean that we are. So you shouldn’t feel depressed.
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Depressed Hopeful Mean Talking
Your first responsibility is to yourself and to your own goodness of heart.
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Firsts Heart Responsibility
If you’re going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it’s in the story or in the world, there’s a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
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Acceptance Emotional Self
Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.
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Compassion Earth Reason
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.
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Greek Kids World
Chekhov – shall I be blunt? – is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.
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Chekhov Stories Story Writers
I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
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Form Kind Should
That’s the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, “Well, I don’t know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can.”
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Add Figures Way
You don’t want to be that parent – the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks – especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Games Kids Parent
The thing I’ve discovered that is a help is that there isn’t a simple virtue or a simple vice. They’re always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Love Simple Vices
I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.
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Arise Art Future People Satisfy Thinking
If I can be more efficient, I’m actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.
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Intimacy Reader Respectful
Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.
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Empathy Feelings Guilt
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.
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Art Kind Space
The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it’s all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Book Firsts Rules Writing
I am always considering the reader. Although this is admittedly kind of odd: Which reader? On what day? In what mood? For me, that “reader” is actually just me, if I had never read the story before.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Actually Kind Mood Odd Stories
[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.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Beautiful Water Writing
Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
GEORGE SAUNDERS

Happens Used Writing
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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Fun Phone Thinking

Other Famous Personalities