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
“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
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
“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
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
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
“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
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
“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
“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
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
I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself… — 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
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
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
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
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
Just through the process of trying to make the living and the dead feel real, all these little benefits came out. And… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In real life, when you have an emotional experience, it's never just because of the thing that's been said. There's the backstory.… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I'm from a pretty working-class background, and I really worked hard in my life to eradicate those parts of myself that were… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them,… — 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
