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What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
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
Moments
Responded
Another
Graduation
Human
Failures
Humans
Regret
Life
Kindness
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Front
Sensibly
Suffering
Mildly
More quotes by George Saunders
I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world.
George Saunders
I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.
George Saunders
What I really found myself interested in was the idea that our minds our so powerful and when we're living, the mind is dampened by the body. As crazy as our minds can get, they're only so crazy because they're physically housed.
George Saunders
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 Saunders
I sometimes imagine a great writer as a sort of God-surrogate: the writer is doing his or her human-best to emulate what God might think of is, if God was inclined to observe some human beings and present their activities in the form of a narrative.
George Saunders
I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.
George Saunders
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
Your first responsibility is to yourself and to your own goodness of heart.
George Saunders
I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride in ignorance, or somehow use elite to mean person who has taken the time to know and then are eager to dismiss, say, striving, or the notion that improving one's self out of difficult conditions is a noble thing.
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
One of the principals of composition, I would say, in fiction, is you want to do what you can do a lot of. You want to do what you're enthusiastic about and what rings your bell. In this case, almost every decision I made was on that basis.
George Saunders
People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.
George Saunders
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
Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?
George Saunders
I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people.
George Saunders
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
George Saunders
I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.
George Saunders
I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that's my issue.
George Saunders
I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.
George Saunders
I came to writing kind of late. I was an engineer, and the one thing I've learned is that you have to steer a project in the direction of the maximum fun for you. You could say lively energy, or you have to try to be intrigued. Basically, if you were a musician and you were playing joylessly, nobody would want to hear you.
George Saunders
