If you start with the idea that you are going to be writing about a night in a graveyard, and that there… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
There's not a lot of whimsicality in the form, not a lot of indulgence allowed. Like when I was younger, I would… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
So much of what I am doing in my fiction is just trying to get into interesting places in terms of language… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I say yes to the hot bath and the sandwich - to getting ourselves into the best possible mental shape to identify… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
To understand any plea for further consideration of a group you don't know anything about to be some form of, quote, political… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I sometimes imagine a great writer as a sort of God-surrogate: the writer is doing his or her human-best to emulate what… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Success is like a mountain in front of you that keeps growing. If you're not careful, it will take up your whole life. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Wow wow wow is all I can say! Remember how I always buy lunchtime Scratch-Off ticket? Have I said? Maybe did not say? Well,… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“We must see God not as a Him (some linear rewarding fellow) but an IT, a great beast beyond our understanding, who wants something… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please,… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In my case, when I am trying to be "kind" I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“A Clinton staffer tells me his theory. Think about Frank Sinatra, he says: born to sing. Think about Willie Mays: born to play ball.… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“You were torturing a cat," she says. "With a freaking prod." "A prod I built myself in metal shop," he says. "But of course… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Rachel got up and did this happy little shuffle, like she was some cheerful farmer chick who'd just stepped outside to find the hick… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy… — George Saunders Copy Share Image