George Saunders
I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I'm George. You know, I'm with The New Yorker. I'm a liberal. I'm somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.Collection: Guy
I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, "Art, don't come in here." But that's maybe a deeper question.Collection: Art
Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.Collection: Art
It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.Collection: Trying
I have nothing. My model is I have nothing figured out, and I'm starting with some little nugget and hoping that it will talk back to me enough to let it grow.Collection: Nuggets
One of the sad things about this political season is that it allows [requires] us to get behind our big "Liberal" or "Conservative" banner and forget, for a time, that the big problems in our country have been around a long time and have been batted back and forth, caused and exacerbated, by both sides, and are more spiritual or ethical than [merely] political.Collection: Spiritual
I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.Collection: Unique
The only thing I might have noticed [and this is pretty anecdotal] is that there is some tendency to need to be taught that 'writing is rewriting' - maybe more of a sense than was pervasive 10 years ago that the first or second pass of a story is sufficient. That is an idea that is easily dislodged, but I suspect it might have something to do with the turnaround time re: blogging and so on - this sense that there is some essential truth about a first draft that one runs the risk of "ruining" by coming back to it.Collection: Running
So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.Collection: Art
I think about how I conceptualize the audience. The trick is that they've got to be smarter and more worldly than me. So as I'm revising, I'm keeping that in mind. I cannot condescend, even a little bit. Every single choice that I make is motivated by that.Collection: Thinking
I would say one thing writing this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] did for me was underscore the fact that this issue [all men are created equal] has never been properly addressed and it hasn't gone away.Collection: Book
I read to make myself feel awake.Collection: Awake
The thing I've discovered that is a help is that there isn't a simple virtue or a simple vice. They're always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.Collection: Simple
Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.Collection: Writing
The number of rooms in a fictional house should be inversely proportional to the years during which the couple living in that house enjoyed true happiness.Collection: Couple
I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid.Collection: Mean
Now I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what's inside the box bears some linear resemblance to "real life" -- he can put whatever he wants in there. What's important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit.Collection: Art
What's really baffling to me is the way that the technology has risen up to help us become more materialistic.Collection: Technology
I've had that situation where I start writing somebody really miserable, and in order to make the story come alive, I have to give them a vote of confidence, make him vulnerable or wounded. But in real life, you often meet people who, in that particular moment, actually shouldn't get a vote of confidence.Collection: Real
I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.Collection: Believe
That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality - your soul, if you will - is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.Collection: Mother
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 amount of self-acceptance that is required.Collection: Acceptance
Art is not some inessential frippery - it is the nation's means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one's nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.Collection: Art
Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).Collection: Mean
I attended Catholic school. We received a great education from the nuns. ... Also, guilt. Guilt and a feeling of never being satisfied with what you've done. And a sense that you are inadequate and a big phony. All useful for a writer. I'm always being edited by my inner nun.Collection: School
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 this way, I accept it. She's hard to talk to, I accept it. Then that person eventually will come all the way out into the sun. I think it's the same way with our talent. We say, "Look, I'm not going to judge you. I'm going to try to use you in the very best way."Collection: Thinking
I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in Lincoln in the Bardo]. It's like if you're an actor and you're always overacting, well, you're a bad actor. But if you're an actor who subdues yourself to the extent that's necessary, then you're really acting.Collection: Order
Later, I went one step further, by putting in some invented "historical" bits [into the Lincoln in the Bardo]. And reading those alongside the actual historical bits was like looking into a sort of a painful mirror, because "my" parts were so show-offy at first. They stood out because they were so flamboyant.Collection: Reading
Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.Collection: Book
Ralph Kramden, as played by Jackie Gleason, was this big bumbling New York City bus driver who was kind of mean and crass and a little bit egotistical. But underneath it all, he was a big heart looking for a place to land I think.Collection: New York
I think when you see [Donald] Trump in person, my reaction is you kind of enjoy it. It's kind of an enjoyable night out.Collection: Night
I actually do believe in life after death.Collection: Believe
I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.Collection: Writing
As Flannery O'Connor says, a person can choose what she writes but she can't choose what she makes live. Some people are really acoustic writers and so for them the secret revision is sound. Other people may revise in terms of the way a paragraph feels. There's a million ways to do it.Collection: Writing
In Catholicism, we would say you're going to be judged, so therefore you should do better now. For me, Buddhism is somewhat more workable because instead of saying I have to do good, it says I have to notice what I'm actually doing.Collection: Buddhism
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 the table in an accepting way.Collection: People
I think we need leadership that can gently and with affection remind us of what we Americans mostly agree upon: civility, kindness, tolerance, humour, et cetera. The current Trump administration seems to thrive on trying to enforce a very odd, fearful agenda, that it tries to disguise in a false garment of fondness for the working-class - despite the fact that its policies seem designed to continue the decades-long habit of marginalizing that group.Collection: Kindness
One lesson I learned the hard way, early in my career, was that if I tried to write to be smart or to convey a theme or from some existing plan, the result was usually pretty boring. My intuitive move, whenever I'm considering writing something, is to steer towards what feels enjoyable. Another way of saying it is, you just try to avoid the "sucky." If you start to think of a story and a way to tell it, and your reaction is kind of like, Ugh, that's going to be hard, then you don't want to do that.Collection: Smart
There's not a lot of whimsicality in the form, not a lot of indulgence allowed. Like when I was younger, I would sometimes go, "Oh, every other section will be narrated by a chair." Or, "It will be a double helix shape!" That never really worked.Collection: Shapes
I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.Collection: Book
Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you're a Christian, you see Christian iconography.Collection: Christian
I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil." I think even like Saddam Hussein or Hitler would wake up and say, "I think it's going to be a good day. I'm gonna do some really important work." And given their definition of good, they went out and did horrible things.Collection: Morning
I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!"Collection: Dark
One of the ideas that runs through this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] is this Buddhist notion that the mind is incredibly powerful; not the brain but the mind.Collection: Running
I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.Collection: Writing
You didn't plan to write a story; it just happened. Well, it could be argued that the next thing you should do is find a hole to dig. Right? So you start digging a hole and then somebody brings a body along and puts it in. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not that you say, "I want to write a story about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and "I don't know what I'm doing here in this story,' and - boop! a shovel. "Oh, interesting. Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."Collection: Writing
In my personal and spiritual life, I reject that. I don't believe in that. I'm always trying to get my mind into a less judgmental place, making less rigid judgments about things like "perverse" versus "pure." But in terms of prose, those sorts of oppositions seem to work.Collection: Spiritual
As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.Collection: Real
Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.Collection: Reading