Quotes from George Saunders

All men labor under some impingements on their freedom; none is absolutely at liberty.

There are days so perfect you feel: This is what life about. When old, will feel whole life worth it, because I got to experience this perfect day. Today that kind of day.

And they left, neither knowing how close they had come to getting Darkenfloxxedâ"¢ out their wing-wangs.

Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond.

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us.

Plus he'd been raised on a farm, or near a farm anyways, and anybody raised on a farm knew you had to do what you had to do in terms of sick animals or extra animals—the pup being not sick, just extra.

I could see that, over the years, my babies would slowly transform into selfish-dick babies, then selfish-dick toddlers, kids, teenagers, and adults, with me all that time skulking around like some unclean suspect uncle.

It smelled of man sweat and spaghetti sauce and old books. Like a library where sweaty men went to cook spaghetti.

Matt Merton comes back and explains that last week's show on suicide, in which the parents watched a reenactment of their son's suicide, was a healing process for the parents, then shows a video of the parents admitting it was a healing process. (Sea Oak)

I am trying to rekindle my feeling of fondness for the world.

They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever—

So say you are charged with, you and some of your colleagues, lifting a heavy dead whale carcass onto a flatbed.

On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen.

Weird sunshower around three. Linda Hertney: It's like a final goodbye from Todd. (Linda = nut. Once claimed crow on ledge was reincarnation of her dead husband. Said she could tell by way crow's head was cocked disapprovingly at large lunch she was eating.)

We can reduce all of writing to this: we read a line, have a reaction to it, trust (accept) that reaction, and do something in response, instantaneously, by intuition.

What do my colleagues know of Dad? What do they know of me? What kind of friend gets a kick out of posting in the break room a drawing of you eating an entire computer? What kind of friend jokes that someday you'll be buried in a specially built container after succumbing to heart strain? I'm sorry but I feel that life should offer more than this.

Oh, you break my heart. Why does everything have to be so sad to you? Why do you have so many negative opinions about things you don't know about, like foreign countries and diseases and everything? Why can't you be more like Chief Wayne? He has zero opinions. He's just upbeat.

Kill every dog, every cat, she said slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too.

He was the sort of child people imagine their children will be, before they have children.

Three cars for two grown-ups, I thought. What a country. What a couple selfish dicks my wife and her new husband were. I could see that, over the years, my babies would slowly transform into selfish-dick babies, then selfish-dick toddlers, kids, teenagers, and adults, with me all that time skulking around like some unclean suspect uncle.

I would have done anything to stop the hitting. Anything. So much for human dignity, I think, a few whacks in the ribs and you're calling a fat guy God and eating soil at his request.

Ma was out back, head in hands, weaving in and out of her heaped-up crap. It was both melodramatic and not. I mean, when Ma feels something deeply, that's what she does: melodrama. Which makes it, I guess, not melodrama?

I had my moments. My free, uninterrupted, discretionary moments. Strange, though: it is the memory of those moments that bothers me the most. The thought, specifically, that other men enjoyed whole lifetimes comprised of such moments. (Thomas Havens)

What we're doing in writing is not all that different from what we've been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones' particular charms. To say that "a light goes on" is not quite right—it's more like: a fixture gets installed. Only many years later...will the light go on.