George Saunders

I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion,

— George Saunders

“I have plenty of friends," she says. "Name one." She looks at me. Which I guess is sort of sweet.”

— George Saunders

I'm a control freak. I'm defensive. And I'm an egomaniac. That's true about me.

— George Saunders

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

— George Saunders

My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.

— George Saunders

There are books that I read years ago that enlivened things in me that haven't died yet.

— George Saunders

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

— George Saunders

“He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.”

— George Saunders

It really strikes me how much of your energy in America, especially if you're from a working back-ground, is spent just keeping…

— George Saunders

My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to…

— George Saunders

“I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end,…

— George Saunders

“These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in…

— George Saunders

As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come…

— George Saunders

I've seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.

— George Saunders

I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that…

— George Saunders

“Which maybe that’s what love was: liking someone how he was and doing things to help him get even better.”

— George Saunders

I don't like that new age posture where you kind of tilt your head. I don't like that posture right now. I…

— George Saunders

“I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water,…

— George Saunders

It's not fiction's job to be photographically representative of reality. If I want to make a fictional world where there's no kindness,…

— George Saunders

I've also found that trying to be active with social media changes my moment-to-moment perceptions. Instead of feeling, "What's the deepest version…

— George Saunders

“Who else could you have been but exactly who you are? I said. Did you, in the womb, construct yourself? All your…

— George Saunders

I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in…

— George Saunders

“One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing…

— George Saunders

I've been reading about and writing about the Civil War period and it is so striking that slavery was never made right…

— George Saunders

“All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface is…

— George Saunders

“Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother…

— George Saunders

One of the things I noticed about the Trump supporters was a lot of projected fear. I can't tell you how many…

— George Saunders

“Forgoing eternally, sir, such things as, for example: two fresh-shorn lambs bleat in a new-mown field; four parallel blind-cast linear shadows creep…

— George Saunders

“Why was it, she sometimes wondered, that in dreams we can't do the simplest things? Like a crying puppy is standing on…

— George Saunders

“Then I'm a paunchy guy in a room, with a note pinned to his sleeve: "You were alone in the world," it…

— George Saunders

One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it's going…

— George Saunders

“How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and…

— George Saunders

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

— George Saunders

“None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.”

— George Saunders

Anyone can be shamed, but feeling guilt requires empathy within.

— George Saunders

My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.

— George Saunders

We have not been energetic enough - white people haven't - in pursuing racial equity.

— George Saunders

A person supporting [Donald]Trump likes Trump. And I think they would say the same about me.

— George Saunders

Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.

— George Saunders

“Even a Canadian baby with a harelip would be beyond our means.”

— George Saunders