531 Quotes by George Saunders

The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in which we’re ruled by big talking turds, it doesn’t mean that we are. So you shouldn’t feel depressed...

Whatever your supposed politics are – left, right – if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.

I think that’s one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process – the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.

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 insulted. And you’d have a right to be.

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, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.

If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that’s something that no one can deny.

I love the feeling of being on the hunt – the feeling that the story is refusing to be solved in some lesser way and is insisting that you see it on its highest terms.

And I woslike: O wow.

There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer.'