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George Saunders Biography

George Saunders

George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to the weekend magazine of The Guardian between 2006 and 2008.

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George Saunders Quotes

. . . smile first, then speak.

Firsts, Smile, Speak

The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.

Art, Bottom, Life Is Short, Line, Long

Both [Donald] Trump and Bernie [Sanders] got to this idea of the vanishing middle class sooner and with more passion than more mainstream politicians, and benefited from it. The difference, of course, is that Bernie understood this in a more compassionate framework, and talked about it in conjunction with a revitalization of another part of the American project, which is the notion that we are all created equal, and that our laws and culture and action ought to reflect that.

Class, Compassionate, Conjunction, Law, Passion, Reflect

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.

Moment, Reading, Seen, Skills, Specificity, Writing

I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself.

Art, Cycle, Frustration, Game, Right, Writing

I have been married to my wife, Paula, for 25 years. We have wonderful kids. Things are - it's been a really rich life, so I started thinking, is there a way to get valence a little more into the stories, the idea that, yes, things can go wrong, but also they can go right.

Kids, Thinking, Wrong, Years, Yes

I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world.

Differences, Making A Difference, Genius, Awareness, Word, Daring

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

Ends, Excite, Person, Shots, Trying, Youll

The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love, making the same hurtful mistakes over and over, a slave to neuroses, fear, and the habitual.

Fear, Making, Mistake, Mistakes, People, Underappreciating

From the perspective of someone with two grown and wonderful kids, that your instincts as parents are correct: a minute spent reading to your kids now will repay itself a million-fold later, not only because they love you for reading to them, but also because, years later, when they’re gone and miles away, those quiet evenings, when you were tucked in with them, everything quiet but the sound of the page-turns, will, seem to you, I promise. . . . . . sacred.

Kids, Love, Love You, Quiet, Reading, Wonderful

The internet kind of feels like happiness sometimes, however. It feels like stimulation.

Happiness, Internet, Kind, Sometimes, Stimulation

Whether you're eighteen or sixty, in a certain way, whatever you know is valid.

Certain, Eighteen, Know, Way

As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.

Firsts, Impersonate, Keep, Stories, Story, Trying

Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.

Baggage, Interesting, Political, Start, Thematic, Writing

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

Becoming, Graduation, Life, Life Is, Right, Speed

Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it's super-sized because there's no bodily damper on it.

Buddhist, Ideas, Mind, Damper, Whole, Idea

It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.

Attitude, Attitudes, Certain, Desire, Vignettes

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

Depth, Kind, Profundity, Stories, Trying

That underscored this idea that when we're reading a book or writing a book, you're in an act of co-creation. The reader and the writer are both trying to dress up and present their best selves and then there's that moment, when suddenly, as a reader, you're not exactly you anymore, and likewise, as a writer, you're not really you.

Act, Book, Present, Reading, Writing

You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.

Book, Creating, Expectations, See, Whole

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