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Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).
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
Identify
Within
Working
Language
Means
Others
Mean
Bullshit
More quotes by George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
George Saunders
I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
George Saunders
The old and honorable American notion, that a person who works hard should be able to live in freedom and security, with dignity - seems to have taken on a secondary status.
George Saunders
I was trained in seismic prospecting. We'd drill a deep hole and put dynamite in the bottom and blow it up remotely, which would give you a cross-sectional picture of the subsurface, which tells you where to drill.
George Saunders
Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'
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 watched a bunch of kids movies on Christmas. I was kind of joking with our family by asking, Is anyone allowed to die in a kid's movie anymore?
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
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.
George Saunders
It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.
George Saunders
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
George Saunders
I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.
George Saunders
Social media sometimes feels like a vehicle for one-dimensional sniping, more than true criticism.
George Saunders
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
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
Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.
George Saunders
My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.
George Saunders
I don't feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
George Saunders