Quotes from George Saunders

That thing in my box? he said. Has nothing to do with me.

We might say that the three paragraphs we've just read were in service of increased specification.

The choosing, the choosing, that's all we've got.

Every day starts out as a certain day, dear reader, which, when it begins, we call today. Hence, every day, as we wake to a new today, we must assume that today may be the day. For what, though? That is what is unknown, that is what I must find out, and quickly now: for what will each of my coming todays henceforth be for?

In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family.

to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.

We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask.

We were allowed to lie there, limbs intermingled, for nearly an hour. It was bliss. It was perfection. It was that impossible thing; happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

God help the culture that pretends that earlier stupidities never happened and tries to eradicate all evidence of them.

We might think of a story as a kind of ceremony, like the Catholic Mass, or a coronation, or a wedding. We understand the heart of the Mass to be communion, the heart of a coronation to be the moment the crown goes on, the heart of the wedding to be the exchanging of the vows. All of those other parts (the processionals, the songs, the recitations, and so on) will be felt as beautiful and necessary to the extent that they serve the heart of the ceremony.

Life is full of beauty. Why fight? Why hate? Learn to enjoy, and you will have no need to fight, and no desire to! Love life, walk in a circle, learn to enjoy coffee!

In Far East Distant Outer Horner, a lush verdant zone where cows' heads grew out of the earth shouting sarcastic things at anyone that passed, which, though lush and verdant, was unpopulated because the cows sarcasm was so withering.

Friend: We are here. Already here. Within. A train approaches a wall at a fatal rate of speed. You hold a switch in your hand, that accomplishes you know not what: do you throw it? Disaster is otherwise assured. It costs you nothing. Why not try?

the place on G. eddie baron

These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth.

I'd say there's a general thesis in here somewhere: any story that suffers from what seems like a moral failing (that seems sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, pedantic, appropriative, derivative of another writer's work, and so on) will be seen, with sufficient analytical snooping, to be suffering from a technical failing, and if that failing is addressed, it will (always) become a better story.

And now must lose them.

I had been happy, happy enough, but now I often found myself uttering a spontaneous prayer that went, simply: She is here, still here. It was as if a rushing river had routed itself through my house, which was pervaded now by a freshwater scent and the awareness of something lavish, natural, and breathtaking always moving nearby.

Brenda was having none of it. She sat there like one of the working-class ladies of his childhood, bitter fighters with bright red faces, emanating a savage scary blankness that he understood to mean: Fuck you, you are not forgiven.

None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good—

I said I didn't know about any of that but sure would fancy another of those pills. Come with us then, Miranda said. The McBains in the gully paused to listen. As did the cows. As did, somehow, the barn. I was so tired and had been tired for ever so long. I believe I will come with, I said.

Sweetie, no one is coming. To see how good we have done/are doing. It is just us. Forever. Until a flood gets us or the air or food stops coming. What a joke, the way we live. The worry, the suspicion, the stress, the meanness. I keep dreaming that these dead are telling me what they would do if they could come back. What nobody has said so far: Rat out more folks and kick harder when asked.

Lilly, as always, put all in perspective, by saying who cares about stupid bumper, we're going to get a new car soon anyway, when rich, right? Upon arriving home, put bumper in garage. In garage, found dead large mouse or small squirrel crawling with maggots. Used shovel to transfer majority of squirrel/mouse to Hefty bag. Smudge or stain of squirrel/mouse remains on garage floor, like oil stain w/embedded fur tufts

I think fiction at its best can serve as a moment of induced bafflement that calls into question our usual relation to things and reminds us that our minds, as nice as they are, aren't necessarily up to the task of living, and shouldn't get cocky.