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" It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore. "
George Saunders
Something
You
Once
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" 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. "
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Believe
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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. "
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" Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up. "
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Up
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" Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?' "
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Mall
Remember
Used
" 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. "
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You
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" I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime. "
George Saunders
Beauty
Reality
Suffering
" 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 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
" 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. "
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Pain
Connection
You
" When I'm explaining something to you, if I'm being long-winded, and twisty in a non-productive way, I could make you feel vaguely insulted. And you'd have a right to be. "
George Saunders
Right
Feel
Being
" Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.' "
George Saunders
Story
Accepted
Back
" 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
" 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
" 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
" If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too. "
George Saunders
Work
World
Positive
" That for me was the big turning point in my artistic life, when my wife and I had our kids. The world got infused with morality again. Every person in the world should theoretically be loved as much as I love my daughters. "
George Saunders
Me
World
Wife
" 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
" The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties. "
George Saunders
Love
Like
Funny
" 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
" 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
Kind
People
Race
" 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 tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar. "
George Saunders
Birthday
Character
Drama
" 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
" 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
" Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up. "
George Saunders
Early
Meaning
Realize
" 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
" I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory. "
George Saunders
Vision
Creative
Life
" 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
" 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
Flying
Myself
Evil
" There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity. "
George Saunders
Spontaneity
Community
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