George Saunders Quotes - Page 19

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• I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!"

  George Saunders

  Dark, Thinking, Surprise

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.

  George Saunders

  Writing, People, Tools

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• I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You didn't plan to write a story; it just happened. Well, it could be argued that the next thing you should do is find a hole to dig. Right? So you start digging a hole and then somebody brings a body along and puts it in. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not that you say, "I want to write a story about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and "I don't know what I'm doing here in this story,' and - boop! a shovel. "Oh, interesting. Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."

  George Saunders

  Writing, Interesting, Walking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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.

  George Saunders

  Moving, Plot, Want

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• I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Air, Stories

  Interview With Jenny Shank, www.patheos.com. March 6, 2017.

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• The way I understood purgatory - and maybe you've got a different version - but in Chicago in the '70s, the idea was it was like detention. You had screwed up and you go over there in purgatory and you sit there until the end of days and then we'll decide. You'd made your mistake, and you were in prison, and it's not terrible and it's not great, and you feel a little crappy because you were not in the presence of God.

  George Saunders

  Mistake, Ideas, The End Of The Day

  Interview With Jenny Shank, www.patheos.com. March 6, 2017.

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• There's not a lot of whimsicality in the form, not a lot of indulgence allowed. Like when I was younger, I would sometimes go, "Oh, every other section will be narrated by a chair." Or, "It will be a double helix shape!" That never really worked.

  George Saunders

  Shapes, Sometimes, Form

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in Lincoln in the Bardo]. It's like if you're an actor and you're always overacting, well, you're a bad actor. But if you're an actor who subdues yourself to the extent that's necessary, then you're really acting.

  George Saunders

  Order, Historical, Acting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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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.

  George Saunders

  Book, Long, Hyper

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you're a Christian, you see Christian iconography.

  George Saunders

  Christian, Buddhist, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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