George Saunders Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.”

“It seems to me a worthy goal: try to create a representation of consciousness that's durable and truthful, i.e., that accounts, somewhat, for all the strange, tiny, hard-to-articulate, instantaneous, unwilled things that actually go on in our minds in the course of a given day, or even a given moment.”

“There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.”

“If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.”

“It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.”

“Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.”

“That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.”

“When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.”

“I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.”

“The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.”