Quote

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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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
Mind
Desire
Curious
Make
Jobs
Raises
Part
Expectations
Character
Pressure
Look
Follow
Spits
Looks
Reader
Spit
Every
Scene
Expectation
Kind
Bits
Text

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The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.
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The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.
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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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We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.
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Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
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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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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.
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We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
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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.
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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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In my case, when I am trying to be kind I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.
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In fiction, conceptualizing, I've found, produces dull and over-controlled text.
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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 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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It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.
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The internet kind of feels like happiness sometimes, however. It feels like stimulation.
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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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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.
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The old and honorable American notion, that a person who works hard should be able to live in freedom and security, with dignity - seems to have taken on a secondary status.
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What I'm primarily saying,' he says, 'is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice.
George Saunders