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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

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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
Book
Fans
Arrogant
Country
Small
Regular
Thing
Books
Print
Going
Start
Cross
Bigs
Crosses
Next
Road
Become
Large
Aspiring
Home
Stay
Trips

More quotes by George Saunders

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My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I'm a little lost.
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Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.
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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.
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In real life, when you have an emotional experience, it's never just because of the thing that's been said. There's the backstory. It's like [Ernest] Hemingway's iceberg theory - the current emotional moment is the tip of the iceberg and all of the past is the seven-eighths of the iceberg that's underwater.
George Saunders
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All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.
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Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.
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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.
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We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
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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.
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A country doesn't need a businessman to run it: it needs a heartful, worldly, compassionate leader.
George Saunders
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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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The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.
George Saunders
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I guess: People who are comfortable enough with reality to allow other sorts of realities and other mindsets to just be, and then to regard these with real interest and joy [and the joy appears in the prose quality itself].
George Saunders
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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.
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I had an experience a few years ago where I was on a plane in which one of the engines went out. I couldn't even remember my name. I was just repeating the word no over and over.
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The thing I've discovered that is a help is that there isn't a simple virtue or a simple vice. They're always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.
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.
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It's a big world, and I really like it.
George Saunders
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Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'
George Saunders
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My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
George Saunders