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George Saunders


American
December 2, 1958
Writer
stamens flower bloom blossom
Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'


George Saunders
seascape nature sea summer sky
So I may not have had a gothic childhood, but childhood makes its own gothicity.


George Saunders
Tags: Had Own May
pralongia dolomites alm nature
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.


George Saunders
Tags: Age Then Try
There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.
George Saunders
That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.
George Saunders
Tags: Me Way Story
You know, you can talk about race, you can talk about sex, you can talk about your biopsy. But when you get into class, people kind of clench up.
George Saunders
Tags: You People About
I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.
George Saunders
Tags: Think Always Your
The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.
George Saunders
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
Tags: Think I Think Big
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
George Saunders
Tags: You Just More
Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.
George Saunders
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.
George Saunders
Tags: People Them Other
The cool parts - the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as 'the Vegas of the Middle East' or 'the Venice of the Middle East' or 'the Disney World of the Middle East, if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert' - have been built in the last ten years.
George Saunders
Tags: Cool Out Been
More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off?
George Saunders
Tags: Like Who More
To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway.
George Saunders
Tags: You Me About
My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect.
George Saunders
Tags: Age You People