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I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
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
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Thinking
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Compassion
Fiction
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More quotes by 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
What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.
George Saunders
What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.
George Saunders
From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.
George Saunders
You can say you're a liberal and everybody laughs and it's a good time.
George Saunders
Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
George Saunders
My understanding of kindness is that we are hoping to be truly beneficial in every situation, and that this desire means a whole suite of things: being nicer, sure, but also being more aware, more present, more articulate, more fearless, less habituated, etc., etc. And sometimes even being firm, or having an edge, or even being angry.
George Saunders
So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing bad news that life is short and art is long.
George Saunders
There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer'.
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. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!
George Saunders
Of course there's objective truth, but when we're looking at people's accounts of it, it seems the real truth lies in the accretion of all these different versions.
George Saunders
I'm repledging myself to human-scale values. As a fiction writer, the best data comes through the senses and is then processed through many revisions. We have to learn to be intelligent assessors of the data coming in to us and what it's doing to our mental process.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
The millions or billions of micro decisions that you're going to make, that's what will determine who you are as a writer, not you deciding in advance.
George Saunders
It really strikes me how much of your energy in America, especially if you're from a working back-ground, is spent just keeping your head above water. It really saps your grace and your strength.
George Saunders
I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.
George Saunders
So many people mentioned this at these rallies. You go to these things and it's kind of like an oldies concert. I mean, it's not hostile.
George Saunders
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
