George Saunders Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.

  George Saunders

  Real, Community, Different

  4 Copy quote

• The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.

  George Saunders

  Jobs, Artist, Thinking

  "This Week in Fiction: George Saunders" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. October 4, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• I was trained in seismic prospecting. We'd drill a deep hole and put dynamite in the bottom and blow it up remotely, which would give you a cross-sectional picture of the subsurface, which tells you where to drill.

  George Saunders

  Blow, Giving, Holes

  George Saunders (2013). “Tenth of December”, p.23, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks - especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.

  George Saunders

  Kids, Games, Parent

  "This Week in Fiction: George Saunders" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. October 4, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Needs, Produce

  4 Copy quote

• The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

  George Saunders

  Jobs, Artist, Thinking

  "This Week in Fiction: George Saunders" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. October 4, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.'

  George Saunders

  Hate, Ideas, Voice

  "George Saunders: My desktop". Interview With Ben Johncock, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a liberal and I'm left of Gandhi and I don't like Trump.

  George Saunders

  Trump, Left

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.

  George Saunders

  Thinking, Compassion, Play

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  George Saunders

  Kids, Thinking, Issues

  "Interview: George Sanders gives advice". Interview with Sally Errico, www.newyorker.com. March 22, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• Now, we don't really believe these things - intellectually we know better - but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what's actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.

  George Saunders

  Selfish, Believe, Heart

  "George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates". George Saunders' Speech at Syracuse University for the class of 2013, 6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com. July 31, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• I think even like Saddam Hussein or Hitler would wake up and say, "I think it's going to be a good day. I'm gonna do some really important work." And given their definition of good, they went out and did horrible things.

  George Saunders

  Good Day, Thinking, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?

  George Saunders

  Mom, Baby, Jesus

  4 Copy quote

• We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.

  George Saunders

  Character, Order, Rivers

  "George Saunders’s Wild Ride" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. December 12, 2010.

  26 Copy quote

• What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.

  George Saunders

  War, Guy, Slaughterhouse Five

  George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.82, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

  George Saunders

  Light, Action, Humans

  Source: www.nationalbook.org

  4 Copy quote

• Goodbye. I'm leaving because I'm bored.

  George Saunders

  Goodbye, Bored, Leaving

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Gratitude, Mistake, Growth

  6 Copy quote

• ...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end... Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more.

  George Saunders

  Home, Men, Pieces

  5 Copy quote

• That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "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, Doe, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.

  George Saunders

  May, Moral, Crossroads

  "Author George Saunders: 'Holding Out A High Vision Of What Art Is Supposed To Do'". Interview with Colin Winnette, www.buzzfeed.com. January 2, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.

  George Saunders

  Pain, Kindness, Law

  George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.55, A&C Black

  52 Copy quote

• I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.

  George Saunders

  Running, Cheer, Children

  "George Saunders's funny, sad stories from a divided nation" by Chris Power, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2016.

  7 Copy quote

• The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.

  George Saunders

  Struggle, Writing, Tired

  13 Copy quote

• As for "toothy kindness" - I think all traditions are full of this sort of tough kindness. If someone is on a wrong or dull path, and someone else startles them into awareness of that, then that's a blessing. And the method by which the startle is obtained might be anger, or satire, or an intentionally applied indifference. But that is, of course, a fine line.

  George Saunders

  Kindness, Blessing, Thinking

  "George Saunders on Trump, Mystery, and Why He Rejects Social Media". Interview with Catherine Woodiwiss, sojo.net. August 30, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

Page 8 of 19

First

← Prev

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin