Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If you're going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it's in the story or in the world, there's a certain… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up… — 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
In a story, for example, you'll start off with a character who is a little bit of a cartoon. That's not satisfying… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
“Those stories tended to be located around the places where things went wrong, and people were cruel to one another, and so… — 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
My theory for nonfiction is that nobody can be free of some kind of conceptions about whatever story they're writing. But if… — 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
I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I love story-writing because I can (more or less, on occasion) actually DO it. That's really the truth. I like the idea… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
On a more technical level, a story takes a lot of words. And to generate words and phrases and images and so… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared… — 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 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
I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
When you're embarking on a piece of writing, the anxiety is just too much, especially when you're young and you're trying to… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I am always considering the reader. Although this is admittedly kind of odd: Which reader? On what day? In what mood? For… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I know that my only chance at any kind of depth or profundity is to linger within the story, trying to make… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I'm very happy - if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I'm… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I love the feeling of being on the hunt - the feeling that the story is refusing to be solved in some… — 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
More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In my work, and in my psyche, there's some very sentimental, traditional, conventional side that's always in argument with a more radical,… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity and depth… — 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
