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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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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
Pure
Either
Things
Sullied
Controlled

More quotes by George Saunders

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I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.
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The traveller must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalisation. But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops.
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You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.
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As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
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We all think we know what happens after death. But maybe it's going to be not only weird but also dorky and comic and inconsistent.
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There are things that are shadow sides of the creative energy that are negative and all that kind of stuff. The only thing that I say to myself is, in the spirit of that quote from the Gnostic Gospels: Writing is a way to let all that stuff out into the sun.
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I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.
George Saunders
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If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process.
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I think if someone could demonstrate to me that fiction did no good, I would still do it, because I think it does good for me.
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Compassion doesn't have to be weak or enabling it can also be quite bold.
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I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
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While I'm doing [writing], I don't feel it.I don't think that's a failing. I think it's just a feature. Like, a feature of oneself.
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The writer has to make pleasure for the reader - which, I think, is done by taking one's character's seriously and taking one's readers seriously -don't condescend or try to be tricky. Be a friend to your reader - I'd say that's a pretty good first step.
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Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity and depth about the fears, cruelties, and humiliations of childhood, but then does that rarest, and more difficult, thing: writes equally beautifully about the moments of victory and transcendence.
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The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.
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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
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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.
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More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off?
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I'm turning 58, and you get that kind of weird, old-guy feeling of you don't have an infinite number of years left and if there's anything you want to say or represent, it's time to try it.
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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