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
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.

George Saunders

Writing, Thinking, Differences

"Gchatting with George Saunders". Interview with Katherine Bernard, www.theparisreview.org. December 23, 2013.
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.

George Saunders

Art, Writing, Frustration

Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.
To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and - like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is - looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there.

George Saunders

Running, Reading, Writing

The Missouri Review Interview, www.missourireview.com. June 1, 2001.
I think it's basically the same game, although with a public figure like [Donald] Trump I think you are bound to consider the public persona rather than the private one. At least that was the case with that piece of writing.

George Saunders

Writing, Thinking, Games

Source: sojo.net
From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.

George Saunders

Real, Writing, Past

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
When I'm not writing, I tend to get depressed and a little bit surly. And then when I'm writing, suddenly I feel enlivened. Now the only thing as I'm getting older that I notice is that it's a pattern.

George Saunders

Writing, Getting Older, Patterns

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I don't know how you feel, but I feel like writing, clarity of thought, and truth have been validated because we see what happens when we get lax in those areas. I'm excited by the idea that writers like us can actually reach out and try to understand and prod and agitate the people who are in support of Trump because we have the tools to do it. We're language people and we're idea people.

George Saunders

Writing, Ideas, People

Source: therumpus.net
As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.

George Saunders

Writing, Kids, Blessing

Source: therumpus.net
All along, my mantra was: Don't write unless it contributes to the emotion, and do anything you do in service of the emotion only.

George Saunders

Writing, Emotion

Source: www.omnivoracious.com
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

You May Also Like:

David Foster Wallace

George Saunders

Follow

Born: December 2, 1958
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics