Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“...graduate college, win Pam, get job, make babies, move ahead in job, forget former feeling of special destiny...” — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“It should, as Chekhov said, prepare us for tenderness. And in this regard it starts, I think, with intention… Our intention is… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end,… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving? — George Saunders Copy Share Image
So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“A story is a really weird art object that should contain life but not be enslaved by the banality.” — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like. — 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… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“For every hundred bucks I make, I set aside five for Bernie's stone. What do you write on something like that? LIFE… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I'm finding, as I get older, that I'm not much of a believer in redemption. I mean, I believe in redemption in… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Because, as someone who does feng shui for a living, there's no way I could do my feng shui if I was… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I have been married to my wife, Paula, for 25 years. We have wonderful kids. Things are - it's been a really… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If you understand writing as primarily engaging an imaginary reader, well, you've kind of been doing that your whole life. You walk… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
My view is that our minds are incredibly powerful animals that are, during life, kept somewhat in check by the load of… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Vonnegut's war was necessary. And yet it was massacre and screaming and confusion and blood and death. It was the mammoth projection… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In a sense my whole life as a writer is trying to find structural ways, or formal ways, to permit that outflowing… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Good God, but life could be less than easy, not that he was unaware that it could certainly be a lot worse,… — 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
“American society is uncomfortable with the idea that some people’s lives are difficult past the point of sanity and that they aren’t… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. But I can look back at the way I thought and felt even… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In my personal and spiritual life, I reject that. I don't believe in that. I'm always trying to get my mind into… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“He is going, he realizes. He is going, and will not be coming back as Brad. He must try at least to… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Had been bulky men, quietly content, who, in our first youth, had come to grasp our own unremarkableness and had, cheerfully (as… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“The terror and consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever loved a child, and suffered that… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Or to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who in your life, do you remember most fondly, with… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Every writer knows that when you're imitating somebody - you know, you're sounding like Faulkner - you're doing pretty good, but your… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to… — 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
