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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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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
Right
Confinement
Realism
Gravity
Allows
Dancing
Walking
Circumstances
Fiction

More quotes by George Saunders

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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
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It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. But I can look back at the way I thought and felt even as a little kid and there was a lot of wonder there, and openness to the many sides of life.
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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For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled.
George Saunders
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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
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Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.
George Saunders
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As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.
George Saunders
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I think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue - having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly - in a good way.
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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From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew amount them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would.
George Saunders
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Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.
George Saunders
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We have to move toward specificity, intelligence, facts, proof, and mutual affection. What I think people have to do now is be very, very assertive about the utter essentiality of intellectual undertakings.
George Saunders
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What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
George Saunders
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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
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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
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If you're going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it's in the story or in the world, there's a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
George Saunders
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I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I'm George. You know, I'm with The New Yorker. I'm a liberal. I'm somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.
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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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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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