Stories Quotes by George Saunders

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

— George Saunders

Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'

— George Saunders

The story sometimes writes you into a corner.

— George Saunders

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

My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and…

— George Saunders

I always describe writing a story as throwing bowling pins in the air and then catching them.

— George Saunders

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

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

I know that my only chance at any kind of depth or profundity is to linger within the story, trying to make…

— George Saunders

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

— George Saunders

Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.

— George Saunders

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

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

I have been married to my wife, Paula, for 25 years. We have wonderful kids. Things are - it's been a really…

— George Saunders

If you start with the idea that you are going to be writing about a night in a graveyard, and that there…

— George Saunders

I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can…

— George Saunders

When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world…

— George Saunders

“Those stories tended to be located around the places where things went wrong, and people were cruel to one another, and so…

— George Saunders

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

I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new…

— George Saunders

The only thing I might have noticed [and this is pretty anecdotal] is that there is some tendency to need to be…

— George Saunders

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

I might take from the current political chaos a desire to somehow reflect its essential qualities in a story - the blatant…

— George Saunders

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we're central to…

— George Saunders

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

On a more technical level, a story takes a lot of words. And to generate words and phrases and images and so…

— George Saunders

My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond…

— George Saunders

I love the feeling of being on the hunt - the feeling that the story is refusing to be solved in some…

— George Saunders

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

So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try…

— George Saunders

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

More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation…

— George Saunders

The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in…

— George Saunders

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

I've had that situation where I start writing somebody really miserable, and in order to make the story come alive, I have…

— George Saunders

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

Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably…

— George Saunders

Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity and depth…

— George Saunders

I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard,…

— George Saunders

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