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" Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth. "
George Saunders
Earth
Sympathy
Compassion
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" What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other. "
George Saunders
Will
Know
Own
" 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
Job
Way
Think
" Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. "
George Saunders
Short
Greatest
Blunt
" 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
Big
Fan
Her
" That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief. "
George Saunders
Way
Story
Seems
" 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
Water
Illusion
Experience
" If death is in the room, it's pretty interesting. But I would also say that I'm interested in getting myself to believe that it's going to happen to me. I'm interested in it, because if you're not, you're nuts. It's really de facto what we're here to find out about. "
George Saunders
Me
Believe
Interesting
" I could actually care less about the poor. We have some living near us, and pee-yew. They are always coming and going to their three or four jobs at all hours of the day and night. Annoying! "
George Saunders
Three
Care
Always
" 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
Kindness
Fear
Details
" The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with that-which-is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. "
George Saunders
Watch
You
Place
" I often think about image, and image is something that - but in truth, the real artistic process, as I've understood it, is 95 percent intuitive, like seat-of-the-pants, at-the-moment decisions that you can't even explain, you know? "
George Saunders
Know
Decisions
Truth
" I'm finding, as I get older, that I'm not much of a believer in redemption. I mean, I believe in redemption in real life - redemption does happen, and it's cool when it does - but I find myself getting leery of my desire for it in stories (especially my own). "
George Saunders
Finding
Cool
Life
" We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish. "
George Saunders
Die
Fail
Try
" 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
Believe
People
Prayer
" The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual. "
George Saunders
Love
Fear
People
" 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
Pain
Connection
You
" I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application. "
George Saunders
Short
Story
Think
" For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page. "
George Saunders
Intelligent
Art
Game
" 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
Matters
People
Own
" It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore. "
George Saunders
Something
You
Once
" I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs. "
George Saunders
Right
Loss
Know
" Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another. "
George Saunders
You
Truth
People
" 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
Me
Caring
Yourself
" Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain. "
George Saunders
Explain
Character
Sum Total
" 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
Hole
You
Up
" 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
Always
Think
Writing
" There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity. "
George Saunders
Spontaneity
Community
More
" 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
I Am
Age
Confidence
" Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?' "
George Saunders
Mall
Remember
Used
" And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course. "
George Saunders
Know
You
Writing