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I read to make myself feel awake.
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
Feels
Make
Awake
Read
Feel
More quotes by George Saunders
I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.
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 try to keep my artistic opinions not so much to myself but on myself.
George Saunders
We're in the transition between birth and death. But the one that people often know about is the transition between the moment of death and whatever comes next, so reincarnation or heaven or hell.
George Saunders
And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.
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 each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.
George Saunders
Being in church so often, spending those hours sitting in front of a highly symbolic array of objects, hearing those beautiful texts - it teaches a kid that there are important truths beyond the literal ones, and that we have ways to access those truths that are, let's say, super-rational.
George Saunders
Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
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
Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.
George Saunders
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
I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.
George Saunders
If death is in the room, it's pretty interesting. But I would also say that I'm interested in getting myself to believe that it's going to happen to me. I'm interested in it, because if you're not, you're nuts. It's really de facto what we're here to find out about.
George Saunders
Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.
George Saunders
Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.
George Saunders
I've had that my whole career. People were always hedging around the question of: Why are you so dark? What happened to you?
George Saunders
The one thing I noticed retroactively was that the energy at those Trump rallies was off the charts compared to the Hillary Clinton rallies. The Bernie Sanders energy was as good, gentler, but there was a real passion there.
George Saunders
The switch that I'd like to throw on is the one that says, Look, you're a human being whose mind is every bit as active as anybody else's. Your experiences are just as real. For that matter, even if they're even if they're crazy, they're valid. They occurred in this world so they're valid topics for literature.
George Saunders
One of the principals of composition, I would say, in fiction, is you want to do what you can do a lot of. You want to do what you're enthusiastic about and what rings your bell. In this case, almost every decision I made was on that basis.
George Saunders
