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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.

George Saunders

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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
Color
Side
Sides
Purist
Kids
Sanctimonious
Also
Perverse
Real
Risky
Kind
Fascination
Things
Catholic

More quotes by George Saunders

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The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He's like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled poor. He doesn't have any bad habits. He's never cranky with his kids.
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I don't mind being criticized intelligently although I don't love it.
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This may be the one clear truth of the so-called border issue: Put a poor country next to a rich one and watch which way the traffic flows. Add impediments, the traffic endeavors to flow around them. Eilimate disparity. the traffic stops.
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I'm such a baby if I even get a flu.
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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.
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Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.
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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.
George Saunders
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Success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it... Err in the direction of kindness.
George Saunders
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It's so ironic that you often hear these right-wing people talking about the Constitution.
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I think when you see [Donald] Trump in person, my reaction is you kind of enjoy it. It's kind of an enjoyable night out.
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What I really found myself interested in was the idea that our minds our so powerful and when we're living, the mind is dampened by the body. As crazy as our minds can get, they're only so crazy because they're physically housed.
George Saunders
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Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you're a Christian, you see Christian iconography.
George Saunders
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Success is like a mountain in front of you that keeps growing. If you're not careful, it will take up your whole life.
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 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
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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
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For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled.
George Saunders
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The number of rooms in a fictional house should be inversely proportional to the years during which the couple living in that house enjoyed true happiness.
George Saunders
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I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in it.
George Saunders
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I watched a documentary about the immigrant crisis around the world. And it does make me blush at all the times I've stood up on the stage and given your speech about the healing power of fiction.
George Saunders