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One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there's a quality of real fearlessness in it - you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.
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
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Career
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Susan
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Challenge
More quotes by George Saunders
What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
George Saunders
I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them.
George Saunders
Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: 'Oh, I should tweet about this.'
George Saunders
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
When I think about what fiction does morally, I'm happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities - sort of fragmented.
George Saunders
So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go.
George Saunders
Every writer has to find the thing to keep her eye on about which she has strong opinions. That's of course deeply personal, but the nice thing is that it has to do with joy rather than fear. It has to do with you. If you're funny, your method will be to try to be funnier. Which again is empowering I think.
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
Compassion doesn't have to be weak or enabling it can also be quite bold.
George Saunders
Every writer knows that when you're imitating somebody - you know, you're sounding like Faulkner - you're doing pretty good, but your life in Hoboken isn't Faulkneresque.
George Saunders
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
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil.
George Saunders
I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!
George Saunders
All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.
George Saunders
When you're out there in America, meeting with regular people, it's a pretty mellow, relaxed, kind-hearted country. The direction from the top, from the President, is following mean-spirited tendencies: fear and undue caution and distrust of the other, so it's very depressing.
George Saunders
What really interests me, on a deeper level, is how our information is coming to us in some kind of messed up way that is making us idiotic. I don't think we've become more idiotic than we always were, but I think the information transfer is funky. The shorthand of it is that social media is making us mentally insane.
George Saunders
I try to keep my artistic opinions not so much to myself but on myself.
George Saunders
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
I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
George Saunders
It's so ironic that you often hear these right-wing people talking about the Constitution.
George Saunders
