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Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.
George Saunders
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George Saunders
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: December 2
Essayist
Fantasy Author
Geological Engineer
Geophysicist
Journalist
Novelist
Professor
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Amarillo
Texas
Quicker
Directly
Humor
Told
Happens
Truth
Used
Writing
More quotes by George Saunders
In the Buddhist texts, some of them say, when you die, basically that wild horse gets cut loose, and the mind is incredibly powerful and expansive, omniscient and can go anywhere and see anything, but - and this is the catch - it's colored by the habits of thought we made in life.
George Saunders
I don't mind being criticized intelligently although I don't love it.
George Saunders
I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.
George Saunders
I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization.
George Saunders
My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.
George Saunders
It's a big world, and I really like it.
George Saunders
One of the revelations in that book [Lincoln in the Bardo] for me was this idea about citizenship. Even that word - citizenship - for someone my age, it makes me cringe. But, to me, the political space we're in now argues for a reboot of fairly simple ideas and the examination of the way that Americans have not been living into them.
George Saunders
Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.
George Saunders
Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.
George Saunders
I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, Art, don't come in here. But that's maybe a deeper question.
George Saunders
Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).
George Saunders
I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
George Saunders
Success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it... Err in the direction of kindness.
George Saunders
Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.
George Saunders
Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.
George Saunders
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
George Saunders
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
The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system. Once you've seen it that way, it always seems that way.
George Saunders
Kindness can mean a lot of different things. In this case, I felt I had to present his [Donald Trump's] supporters in as fair a light as possible - many of them hadn't been interviewed before and that entailed some interviewer-courtesy in the editing and so on.
George Saunders
Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.
George Saunders
