George Saunders Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

George Saunders

Writing, Used, Happens

George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.80, A&C Black
The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.

George Saunders

Writing, People, Sloth

George Saunders (2013). “Tenth of December”, p.21, A&C Black
Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity and depth about the fears, cruelties, and humiliations of childhood, but then does that rarest, and more difficult, thing: writes equally beautifully about the moments of victory and transcendence.

George Saunders

Growing Up, Writing, Intelligent
I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.

George Saunders

Writing, Thinking, Style
A work of art is something produced by a person, but is not that person — it is of her, but is not her. It’s a reach, really — the artist is trying to inhabit, temporarily, a more compact, distilled, efficient, wittier, more true-seeing, precise version of herself — one that she can’t replicate in so-called ‘real’ life, no matter how hard she tries. That’s why she writes: to try and briefly be more than she truly is.

George Saunders

Art, Real, Writing
I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.

George Saunders

Writing, Normal, Energetic

Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.
As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both share an easy, capacious confidence that says he has faith in his readers.

George Saunders

Writing, Have Faith, Tobias

"George Saunders on Trump, Mystery, and Why He Rejects Social Media". Interview with Catherine Woodiwiss, sojo.net. August 30, 2016.
I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people.

George Saunders

Writing, People

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
[Writing] is almost like those boats that sit really low in the water; they look kind of ugly. And then you get one of them up to 80 miles an hour and the hull comes up, and it's a beautiful thing. I'm okay with that for myself.

George Saunders

Beautiful, Writing, Water

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I don't really do much social media. I just don't like it that much. I've trained myself to write very slowly for a lot of money so it really galls me to write quickly for free.

George Saunders

Writing, Media, Social

Source: therumpus.net
The story sometimes writes you into a corner.

George Saunders

Writing, Stories, Sometimes
My mind goes really quickly and I tend to talk really fast, as you've probably heard, I sometimes lose track of my syntax, as I'm talking that fast. The only thing I try to do, well, it's slow down, but also I do something when I'm reading that's similar to when I'm writing a section, which is to really try to imagine you on the other side, in a certain way, as an intelligent, sympathetic presence who's rooting for me to tell you a good story.

George Saunders

Reading, Writing, Intelligent

"George Saunders: It's All About Suckage-Avoidance". Interview With Doug Polisin, www.audible.com. March 15, 2017.
And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.

George Saunders

Book, Writing, Mean

"George Saunders and Andy Ward". www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.
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.

George Saunders

Writing, Thinking, Remember

Source: www.guernicamag.com
I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense of what Herculean effort went into writing page 23, no pretensions as to why the dull patch on page 4 is important for the fireworks that will happen on page 714.

George Saunders

Writing, Effort, Trying
It really was something, to see Ram Bahadur Bomjon, apparently living without food or water. Before I went on that trip I'd asked advice on it from a very wise person who I love and revere - basically trying to see if I was somehow disrespecting Buddhism by trying to write about it, and also looking for some grounding on what stance to take ... and my friend said, "Well, why don't you just go and see?" And I hear that in my head all the time now: "Why don't you go and see?"

George Saunders

Wise, Writing, Buddhism

Source: sojo.net
I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in it.

George Saunders

Book, Fall, Writing

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
While I'm doing [writing], I don't feel it.I don't think that's a failing. I think it's just a feature. Like, a feature of oneself.

George Saunders

Writing, Thinking, Failing

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
When you write an essay, of course you're going to get pushback, but you're going to be allowed to make your case at leisure. You're going to be allowed to take into account possible objections and to fully humanize your reader. That feels to me like a much more sane thing to do.

George Saunders

Writing, Leisure, Cases

Source: therumpus.net
People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.

George Saunders

Writing, People, Tools
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.

George Saunders

Book, Reading, Writing

"George Saunders: It's All About Suckage-Avoidance". Interview With Doug Polisin, www.audible.com. March 15, 2017.
Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up.

George Saunders

Writing, Mean, Stories

George Saunders (2013). “Tenth of December”, p.29, A&C Black
If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process.

George Saunders

Book, Reading, Writing

Source: www.guernicamag.com
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.

George Saunders

Writing, Interesting, Political
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.

George Saunders

Running, Writing, Years

"George Saunders on Trump, Mystery, and Why He Rejects Social Media". Interview with Catherine Woodiwiss, sojo.net. August 30, 2016.

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Born: December 2, 1958
Occupation: Writer
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