531 Quotes by George Saunders

Sometimes we might poop a bit if we are fresh. Which is just what I did, out on the cart that day: I pooped a bit while fresh, in my sick-box, out of rage, and what was the result? I have kept that poop with me all this time, and as a matter of fact – I hope you do not find this rude, young sir, or off-putting, I hope it does not impair our nascent friendship – that poop is still down there, at this moment, in my sick-box, albeit much dryer!

Fiction helps us remember that everything remains to be seen.

What a degraded cosmos. What a case of something starting out nice and going bad.

Each night passed with a devastating sameness.

Why was it, she sometimes wondered, that in dreams we can’t do the simplest things?

I was trained in seismic prospecting. We’d drill a deep hole and put dynamite in the bottom and blow it up remotely, which would give you a cross-sectional picture of the subsurface, which tells you where to drill.

When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average and is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.

I can look back and see that I’ve spent much of my life in a cloud of things that have tended to push “being kind” to the periphery. Things like: Anxiety. Fear. Insecurity. Ambition. The mistaken belief that enough accomplishment will rid me of all that anxiety, fear, insecurity, and ambition. The belief that if I can only accrue enough – enough accomplishment, money, fame – my neuroses will disappear.

Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond.