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I would say one thing writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] did for me was underscore the fact that this issue [all men are created equal] has never been properly addressed and it hasn't gone away.

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
Thing
Equal
Underscore
Never
Issues
Bardo
Would
Gone
Addressed
Men
Fact
Lincoln
Facts
Properly
Away
Hasn
Book
Issue
Writing
Created

More quotes by George Saunders

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My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
George Saunders
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So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go.
George Saunders
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Monologues, in some ways, are the most scientific descriptions of consciousness and even of gatherings.
George Saunders
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The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his reader, who he has likely never met and who is actually thousands of readers.
George Saunders
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You go to the marketplace and there are seventeen consciousnesses moving in and out. Sometimes you want the same shirt that I want, and our thought bubbles collide a bit and that makes plot.
George Saunders
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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
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I have nothing. My model is I have nothing figured out, and I'm starting with some little nugget and hoping that it will talk back to me enough to let it grow.
George Saunders
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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
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Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: 'Oh, I should tweet about this.'
George Saunders
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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
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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.
George Saunders
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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
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We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.
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.
George Saunders
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Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
George Saunders
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Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.
George Saunders
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[Lincoln in the Bardo] is not a long book. And that meant I could obsess over it and live in it both backwards and forwards and hyper-control everything.
George Saunders
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I'm repledging myself to human-scale values. As a fiction writer, the best data comes through the senses and is then processed through many revisions. We have to learn to be intelligent assessors of the data coming in to us and what it's doing to our mental process.
George Saunders
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The story sometimes writes you into a corner.
George Saunders
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It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.
George Saunders