Quotes from George Saunders

It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.

I'm very happy - if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I'm thrilled.

I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, "I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them."

The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it's all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.

The old and honorable American notion, that a person who works hard should be able to live in freedom and security, with dignity - seems to have taken on a secondary status.

I've found that my first drafts are not so special. But the more I work on them, the better they get. They are more unique and defensible.

The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.

Some of our writers are starting to incorporate elements of social media, etc. in the work itself, which is all for the good, I think - finding new ways of being poetic.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

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.

We all think we know what happens after death. But maybe it's going to be not only weird but also dorky and comic and inconsistent.

I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

Fiction is an urgent business. It is the Dying Us telling stories to the Dying Us, trying to crack the nonsense in our heads open with a big hammer pronto, before Death arrives.

It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.

Equality has always been extant but some of us just didn't know it.

It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.

One of the inspiring things about Susan Sarandon career is that there's a quality of real fearlessness in it - you seem to be in it for the challenge and the experience.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

I watched a bunch of kids movies on Christmas. I was kind of joking with our family by asking, "Is anyone allowed to die in a kid's movie anymore?"

He was a father. That's what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.

I grew up in Chicago on the South Side, and had a ton of freedom, just did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. At the risk of sounding dopey, I would say it was blissful.