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Someone told me once - I mean I said, Is it ok that I don't really know what the three-act structure is? And he said, It's basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him Act 3: he gets down.

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
Come
Structure
Mean
Gets
Really
Tree
People
Told
Guy
Stuff
Climbs
Three
Basically
Someone
Throw

More quotes by George Saunders

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My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
George Saunders
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What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
George Saunders
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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.
George Saunders
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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.
George Saunders
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The book says [Lincoln in the Bardo],I really need this sci-fi device of a ghost inhabiting another person. You say okay kind of begrudgingly. So the structure seemed informed by need and efficiency.
George Saunders
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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
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In Catholicism, we would say you're going to be judged, so therefore you should do better now. For me, Buddhism is somewhat more workable because instead of saying I have to do good, it says I have to notice what I'm actually doing.
George Saunders
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I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I'm George. You know, I'm with The New Yorker. I'm a liberal. I'm somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.
George Saunders
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The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.
George Saunders
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The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He's like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled poor. He doesn't have any bad habits. He's never cranky with his kids.
George Saunders
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It's so ironic that you often hear these right-wing people talking about the Constitution.
George Saunders
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I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.
George Saunders
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Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'
George Saunders
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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.
George Saunders
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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.
George Saunders
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In the moment of reading, the writer comes up to the surface and the reader comes up to the surface and they kiss, like two fish. That actually does happen.
George Saunders
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I'm not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become 'large-print' books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books.
George Saunders
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To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and - like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is - looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there.
George Saunders
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When I think about what fiction does morally, I'm happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities - sort of fragmented.
George Saunders
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So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing bad news that life is short and art is long.
George Saunders