Quote

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.

George Saunders

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Writing
Think
Thinking
Feature
Like
Features
Oneself
Failing
Feel

More quotes by George Saunders

Image
I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
George Saunders
Image
Monologues, in some ways, are the most scientific descriptions of consciousness and even of gatherings.
George Saunders
Image
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
Image
If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.
George Saunders
Image
My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.
George Saunders
Image
The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.
George Saunders
Image
From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.
George Saunders
Image
For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled.
George Saunders
Image
We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.
George Saunders
Image
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?
George Saunders
Image
My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
George Saunders
Image
I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations.
George Saunders
Image
People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.
George Saunders
Image
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
George Saunders
Image
It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.
George Saunders
Image
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.
George Saunders
Image
It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.
George Saunders
Image
I have a lot of theories about the beneficial effects of fiction, but I'm always trying to get away from them a little bit.
George Saunders
Image
Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'
George Saunders
Image
When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.
George Saunders