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I feel that there is nothing that can happen to a person that is banal. Everything that happens to us is interesting.

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
Happens
Persons
Person
Everything
Nothing
Feel
Banal
Feels
Happen
Interesting

More quotes by George Saunders

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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
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I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid.
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To understand any plea for further consideration of a group you don't know anything about to be some form of, quote, political correctness. These things are bubbling right under us.
George Saunders
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The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.
George Saunders
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The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He's like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled poor. He doesn't have any bad habits. He's never cranky with his kids.
George Saunders
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For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.
George Saunders
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As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
George Saunders
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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.
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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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When I think about what fiction does morally, I'm happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities - sort of fragmented.
George Saunders
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Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
George Saunders
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All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.
George Saunders
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I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application.
George Saunders
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I don't like that new age posture where you kind of tilt your head. I don't like that posture right now. I want something a little more confident and more sure of the values that we're defending, which are the old ones, love and empathy and patience and tolerance and civility. Not to get into politics or anything.
George Saunders
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Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'
George Saunders
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I'm a control freak. I'm defensive. And I'm an egomaniac. That's true about me.
George Saunders
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When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.
George Saunders
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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
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It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.
George Saunders
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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