George Saunders Quotes

I hear that in my head all the time now: 'Why don't you go and see?'.

I see this quality [real interest and joy] in the work of [Pavel] Chekhov, of course, and [Alexei] Tolstoy and really just about any great writer.

Toni Morrison seems to have a lot of faith in people - that's what I mean by gentle power.

I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid.

I had an experience a few years ago where I was on a plane in which one of the engines went out. I couldn't even remember my name. I was just repeating the word no over and over.

I'm such a baby if I even get a flu.

In the absolute sense - kind of from the God's-eye view - God might feel like, "I made this thing that has all of that in it, all the horror and all the beauty."

In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense.

I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That's the highest aspiration.

There are books that I read years ago that enlivened things in me that haven't died yet.

I have this tendency to take a little bit of questionable knowledge and riff on it.

The internet kind of feels like happiness sometimes, however. It feels like stimulation.

I don't mind being criticized intelligently; although I don't love it.

What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.

I think when you get to export your creative impulse into something, it kind of lessens that busy energy that can be so confrontational and pissy.

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.

I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.

[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.

Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.

I don't feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.

It blew my mind, reading Swing Time, that I could take any sentence in the book, and it was one of the most beautiful sentences written in English.

I was thinking about the legacy of ghosts in fiction, and specifically the moral power of those Dickensian ghosts. Because a ghost can be a very powerful but also manipulative element.

For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled.

As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.

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.

[Reading Swing Time] made me a feel a little bit like when I used to read David [Foster] Wallace. Like, "I can't play that game. I wish I could, but I can't do it."

I think when you see [Donald] Trump in person, my reaction is you kind of enjoy it. It's kind of an enjoyable night out.

I like [Barak] Obama. I like him. So how far does rationality help to persuade anybody? You know, I'm not so sure.

A person supporting [Donald]Trump likes Trump. And I think they would say the same about me.

...But all that power has culminated in gentleness. It is as if that is the point of power: to allow one to access the higher registers of gentleness.

I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing.

He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.

I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don’t you think?

A bad thing happened to you kids, Dad said. But it could have been worse.So much worse, Mom said.But because of you kids, Dad said, it wasn't.You did so good, Mom said.Did beautiful, Dad said.

Fiction is an urgent business. It is the Dying Us telling stories to the Dying Us, trying to crack the nonsense in our heads open with a big hammer pronto, before Death arrives.

. . . Absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom.

Josh joined her at the window. She let him look. He should know that the world was not all lessons and iguanas and Nintendo. It was also this muddy simple boy tethered like an animal.

I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead.

Once again I am only who I am.

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.

A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

A story is a really weird art object that should contain life but not be enslaved by the banality.

Is this the baby?" I said.Ma turned on me again."What do you think it is?" she said. "A midget that can't talk?

Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent.

The thing about girls? Suzanne said. Is we are more content-driven.

He sent the trained dog that is his talent off in search of a fat glorious pheasant, and it brought back the lower half of a Barbie doll.