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
What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Whether you're eighteen or sixty, in a certain way, whatever you know is valid. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I've seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Monologues, in some ways, are the most scientific descriptions of consciousness and even of gatherings. — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Some of our writers are starting to incorporate elements of social media, etc. in the work itself, which is all for the… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system.… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
When you do something that's going to speak to people, it's going to be because you're really allowing all of yourself to… — 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
When I'm explaining something to you, if I'm being long-winded, and twisty in a non-productive way, I could make you feel vaguely… — 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… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B)… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
That's the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, "Well, I don't know what this adds… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Being in church so often, spending those hours sitting in front of a highly symbolic array of objects, hearing those beautiful texts… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I was, not an altar boy, but a reader of the Epistle, and I walked in on a nun and a priest… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
Suddenly absurdism wasn’t an intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the way that wealth was begetting wealth, wealth was… — 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 Flannery O'Connor says, a person can choose what she writes but she can't choose what she makes live. Some people are… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I really wanted to be allowed to the [writer's] table. So it makes me happy to be at the table. It sounds… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
As much as we - in a revisionist way - tell ourselves that we've always been a righteous country with a couple… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I might take from the current political chaos a desire to somehow reflect its essential qualities in a story - the blatant… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that's something… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
When I was a kid, I took 'The Brady Bunch' and 'The Partridge Family' very seriously. It was a world to me… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy… — 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
Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue - having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I find that the great artists I've met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
If you have a friend, what's the best way you can experience her beauty? It's to really accept her. She's weird in… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
This may be the one clear truth of the so-called border issue: Put a poor country next to a rich one and… — George Saunders Copy Share Image
There are things that are shadow sides of the creative energy that are negative and all that kind of stuff. The only… — 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
One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it's going… — 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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
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
“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
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish. — George Saunders Copy Share
“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
“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
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
What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth.… — George Saunders Copy Share
We're in the transition between birth and death. But the one that people often know about is the transition between the moment of death… — George Saunders Copy Share
You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are… — George Saunders Copy Share
![“I really wanted to be allowed to the [writer's] table. So it makes me happy to be at the table. It sounds a little shallow, but if I imagine the shadow life, where I didn't get that chance, and all the ways my negative inclinations would have bloomed if I hadn't gotten the attention, but also the…” quote by George Saunders](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/82e/george-saunders-317_attention_i-really-wanted-to-be-allowed-to-the-wri_2675640.jpg)
![“I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in it.” quote by George Saunders](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/794/george-saunders-317_book_i-knew-if-i-evoked-that-stuff-too-easily_407342.jpg)
