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In fiction, conceptualizing, I've found, produces dull and over-controlled text.

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
Produces
Controlled
Dull
Produce
Fiction
Found
Conceptualizing
Text

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You can say you're a liberal and everybody laughs and it's a good time.
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I try to keep my artistic opinions not so much to myself but on myself.
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I attended Catholic school. We received a great education from the nuns. ... Also, guilt. Guilt and a feeling of never being satisfied with what you've done. And a sense that you are inadequate and a big phony. All useful for a writer. I'm always being edited by my inner nun.
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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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I guess: People who are comfortable enough with reality to allow other sorts of realities and other mindsets to just be, and then to regard these with real interest and joy [and the joy appears in the prose quality itself].
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I don't know about transformation. But scientifically you can say: Well, it doesn't seem to hurt anybody. Personally I've been cheered by books at really critical moments. That much I believe.
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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.
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The switch that I'd like to throw on is the one that says, Look, you're a human being whose mind is every bit as active as anybody else's. Your experiences are just as real. For that matter, even if they're even if they're crazy, they're valid. They occurred in this world so they're valid topics for literature.
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The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with that-which-is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place.
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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.
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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.'
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I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.
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Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it's super-sized because there's no bodily damper on it.
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I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.
George Saunders
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I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.
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When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn't see it. He can't. He's average and is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.
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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.
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I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride in ignorance, or somehow use elite to mean person who has taken the time to know and then are eager to dismiss, say, striving, or the notion that improving one's self out of difficult conditions is a noble thing.
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Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.
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I like [Barak] Obama. I like him. So how far does rationality help to persuade anybody? You know, I'm not so sure.
George Saunders