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" If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience. "
George Saunders
You
Voice
Experience
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" 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
" 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
" Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.' "
George Saunders
Story
Accepted
Back
" I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph. "
George Saunders
Soon
Story
Writing
" When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need. "
George Saunders
Going
Write
Percent
" It would be so weird if we knew just as much as we needed to know to answer all the questions of the universe. Wouldn't that be freaky? Whereas the probability is high that there is a vast reality that we have no way to perceive, that's actually bearing down on us now and influencing everything. "
George Saunders
Questions
Know
Down
" 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
" It seems to me a worthy goal: try to create a representation of consciousness that's durable and truthful, i.e., that accounts, somewhat, for all the strange, tiny, hard-to-articulate, instantaneous, unwilled things that actually go on in our minds in the course of a given day, or even a given moment. "
George Saunders
Goal
Strange
Moment
" 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
" 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
You
Want
Love
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Best
Tired
Struggle
" I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization. "
George Saunders
Know
Us
Time
" Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?' "
George Saunders
Mall
Remember
Used
" Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision. "
George Saunders
Result
Talk
Speed
" 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. "
George Saunders
See
Culture
Average
" It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore. "
George Saunders
Something
You
Once
" So I may not have had a gothic childhood, but childhood makes its own gothicity. "
George Saunders
Gothic
I May Not
May
" 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
" 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
" 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
Game
Fast
You
" When I was a kid, I took 'The Brady Bunch' and 'The Partridge Family' very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus. "
George Saunders
World
Seriously
Family
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. "
George Saunders
Short
Greatest
Blunt
" 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
" 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