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If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.
George Saunders
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George Saunders
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: December 2
Essayist
Fantasy Author
Geological Engineer
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Journalist
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Amarillo
Texas
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More quotes by George Saunders
When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.
George Saunders
I'm a control freak. I'm defensive. And I'm an egomaniac. That's true about me.
George Saunders
Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.
George Saunders
I would say one thing writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] did for me was underscore the fact that this issue [all men are created equal] has never been properly addressed and it hasn't gone away.
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
When we talk about adversity, this is the moment when character really gets tested. When things aren't going the way you want and you can't see anyway that they're going to go the way you want. That's kind of when those old virtues really become valuable and vulnerable also.
George Saunders
My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.
George Saunders
If a writer understands his work as something that originates with him but then, with any luck, gets away from him, then what he needs is someone who can grasp the potential of the piece and lead him to that higher ground.
George Saunders
I'm not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become 'large-print' books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
There's not a lot of whimsicality in the form, not a lot of indulgence allowed. Like when I was younger, I would sometimes go, Oh, every other section will be narrated by a chair. Or, It will be a double helix shape! That never really worked.
George Saunders
I think this is the other big issue that is not going away: Do we really believe that bit in the Constitution or not? I think we do.
George Saunders
Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.
George Saunders
It's a big world, and I really like it.
George Saunders
That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.
George Saunders
I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in 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
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
George Saunders
In the reason that the contrast between the absolute and the relative is so terrible is because we believe so fully in ourselves as permanent, continuous, and central. I feel insane saying this, but if one weren't so deluded about the permanent reality of the self, a lot of this pain would actually lessen.
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
