Quote

I'm a big lover of America. I love the people, but also the weird berms, the strange little high schools tucked away in different places, and just the whole geography and the psycho­logical apparatus of Americans.

George Saunders

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Saunders
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: December 2
Essayist
Fantasy Author
Geological Engineer
Geophysicist
Journalist
Novelist
Professor
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Amarillo
Texas
Little
Strange
Geography
Whole
High
Lover
Different
Bigs
Logical
Love
Away
Schools
People
School
Weird
Also
Lovers
Tucked
America
Places
Apparatus
Littles
Americans
Psycho

More quotes by George Saunders

Image
The demographics are changing - and so what? Citizenship is a question of certain agreed-upon values and that is that. Do we believe that? I think at heart we do.
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
Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?
George Saunders
Image
Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.
George Saunders
Image
We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.
George Saunders
Image
I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs.
George Saunders
Image
What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.
George Saunders
Image
I think the biggest single issue is income inequity and what this is doing to the good old American dream. This and corporatism - this delusional idea that shareholder value outweighs everything else.
George Saunders
Image
What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.
George Saunders
Image
I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
George Saunders
Image
It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.
George Saunders
Image
For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
George Saunders
Image
Someone told me once - I mean I said, Is it ok that I don't really know what the three-act structure is? And he said, It's basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him Act 3: he gets down.
George Saunders
Image
A country doesn't need a businessman to run it: it needs a heartful, worldly, compassionate leader.
George Saunders