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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.

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
Maybe
Death
Happens
Also
Going
Dorky
Think
Inconsistent
Thinking
Comic
Weird

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It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the Truth with a capital T is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.
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Your first responsibility is to yourself and to your own goodness of heart.
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I don't mind being criticized intelligently although I don't love it.
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If you want to be good, all you've got to do is be good.
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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.
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I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
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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.
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Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.
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I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that's my issue.
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I'm starting to withdraw from [technology] as much as I can. I don't do much of the social media stuff. Like, if I'm on Facebook, it changes my relation to the real world in a way that makes me feel sick - almost like I've had too much sugar or something.
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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.
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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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My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.
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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.
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Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
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I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world.
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I read to make myself feel awake.
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We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.
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I do find the values in A Christmas Carol significant. It is important not to be mean and stingy and not to give up love for money.
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That underscored this idea that when we're reading a book or writing a book, you're in an act of co-creation. The reader and the writer are both trying to dress up and present their best selves and then there's that moment, when suddenly, as a reader, you're not exactly you anymore, and likewise, as a writer, you're not really you.
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