Quote

So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go.

George Saunders

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George Saunders
Age: 65
Born: 1958
Born: December 2
Essayist
Fantasy Author
Geological Engineer
Geophysicist
Journalist
Novelist
Professor
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Amarillo
Texas
Littles
Possible
Seed
Ideas
Sure
Sentence
Find
Story
Starts
Divest
Little
Interest
Seeds
Mysteriously
Trying
Idea
Sentences
Revision
Much
Process
Image
Crystal
Really
Stories
Approach
Meanings
Become
Deep
Crystals

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All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.
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I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good for me.
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It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.
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What really interests me, on a deeper level, is how our information is coming to us in some kind of messed up way that is making us idiotic. I don't think we've become more idiotic than we always were, but I think the information transfer is funky. The shorthand of it is that social media is making us mentally insane.
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I have lunch, flirt with some local grandmothers, undercut my flirting by crotching myself on the corner of a table as I leave. -- The Great Divider
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I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them.
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For me, when I'm coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it's almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.
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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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As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.
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To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and - like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is - looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there.
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A person supporting [Donald]Trump likes Trump. And I think they would say the same about me.
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When I think about what fiction does morally, I'm happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities - sort of fragmented.
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I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
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I see this quality [real interest and joy] in the work of [Pavel] Chekhov, of course, and [Alexei] Tolstoy and really just about any great writer.
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I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense of what Herculean effort went into writing page 23, no pretensions as to why the dull patch on page 4 is important for the fireworks that will happen on page 714.
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I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.
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The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.
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My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
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We've got a real problem with social media that we didn't know we were going to have. It's almost like the demons have gotten out of the box.
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If I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.
George Saunders