Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Stand
Guy
Yorker
Talk
Unlucky
Left
Gandhi
Next
Somewhat
Kind
Liberal
Always
George
Would
Eventually

More quotes by George Saunders

Image
In a story, for example, you'll start off with a character who is a little bit of a cartoon. That's not satisfying and you start revising. And as you revise you always are making it better by being specific and by observing more closely, which actually is really the same as saying you love your characters. The close observation equals love of them.
George Saunders
Image
In Catholicism, we would say you're going to be judged, so therefore you should do better now. For me, Buddhism is somewhat more workable because instead of saying I have to do good, it says I have to notice what I'm actually doing.
George Saunders
Image
Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.
George Saunders
Image
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
George Saunders
Image
I sometimes imagine a great writer as a sort of God-surrogate: the writer is doing his or her human-best to emulate what God might think of is, if God was inclined to observe some human beings and present their activities in the form of a narrative.
George Saunders
Image
The best thing we can bring to any fight is a calm and compassionate mind.
George Saunders
Image
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.
George Saunders
Image
That underscored this idea that when we're reading a book or writing a book, you're in an act of co-creation. The reader and the writer are both trying to dress up and present their best selves and then there's that moment, when suddenly, as a reader, you're not exactly you anymore, and likewise, as a writer, you're not really you.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
For me, when I'm coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it's almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
I came to writing kind of late. I was an engineer, and the one thing I've learned is that you have to steer a project in the direction of the maximum fun for you. You could say lively energy, or you have to try to be intrigued. Basically, if you were a musician and you were playing joylessly, nobody would want to hear you.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.
George Saunders
Image
Toni Morrison seems to have a lot of faith in people - that's what I mean by gentle power.
George Saunders
Image
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.
George Saunders
Image
When we talk about adversity, this is the moment when character really gets tested. When things aren't going the way you want and you can't see anyway that they're going to go the way you want. That's kind of when those old virtues really become valuable and vulnerable also.
George Saunders
Image
All storytelling is kind of that - there's a bit of text that you put pressure on that spits out some desire that a character has and then you follow that. The other part is that every scene raises an expectation in the reader's mind - that's part of its job is to make you look in and be curious.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
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