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If you're going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it's in the story or in the world, there's a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
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
Emotional
Going
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Make
Somebody
World
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Whether
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Stories
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Acceptance
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Connections
Self
More quotes by George Saunders
The story sometimes writes you into a corner.
George Saunders
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
The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual.
George Saunders
My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.
George Saunders
I watched a bunch of kids movies on Christmas. I was kind of joking with our family by asking, Is anyone allowed to die in a kid's movie anymore?
George Saunders
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
I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.
George Saunders
We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.
George Saunders
I read to make myself feel awake.
George Saunders
With fiction, and also with nonfiction that you can take your time doing, you have a much better chance of reaching across the divide and connecting with somebody who is opposed to you on some things. They're opposed to you on one axis, which is politics, but if you go over the axis called puppies, you might find some common ground.
George Saunders
I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.
George Saunders
Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.
George Saunders
What really interests me, on a deeper level, is how our information is coming to us in some kind of messed up way that is making us idiotic. I don't think we've become more idiotic than we always were, but I think the information transfer is funky. The shorthand of it is that social media is making us mentally insane.
George Saunders
If I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.
George Saunders
The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.
George Saunders
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.
George Saunders
The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system. Once you've seen it that way, it always seems that way.
George Saunders
I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application.
George Saunders
