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" We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish. "
George Saunders
Die
Fail
Try
Related Quotes:
" So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go. "
George Saunders
Deep
Story
Ideas
" 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
" It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore. "
George Saunders
Something
You
Once
" 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
" A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did. "
George Saunders
Generation
Intelligence
Same
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.' "
George Saunders
Story
Accepted
Back
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?' "
George Saunders
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. "
George Saunders
You
Want
Love
" Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so. "
George Saunders
God
Sometimes
Think
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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