Quotes from George Saunders

We must see God not as a Him (some linear rewarding fellow) but an IT, a great beast beyond our understanding, who wants something from us, and we must give it, and all we may control is the spirit in which we give it and the ultimate end which the giving serves.

We consider speech to be the result of thought (we have a thought, then select a sentence with which to express it), but thought also results from speech (as we grope, in words, toward meaning, we discover what we think).

I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead.

And I woslike: O wow.

The thousand dresses, laid out so reverently that afternoon, flecks of dust brushed off carefully in doorways, hems gathered up for the carriage trip: where are they now? Is a single one museum-displayed? Are some few yet saved in attics? Most are dust. As are the women who wore them so proudly in that transient moment of radiance.

Good God, but life could be less than easy, not that he was unaware that it could certainly be a lot worse, but to go about in such a state, pulse high, face red, worried sick that someone would notice how nervous one was, was certainly less than ideal, and he felt sure that his body was secreting all kinds of harmful chemicals and that the more he worried about the harmful chemicals the faster they were pouring out of wherever it was they came from.

Trap. Horrible trap. At one's birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this?

I have plenty of friends, she says. Name one. She looks at me. Which I guess is sort of sweet.

So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering and I responded … sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Strange, isn't it? To have dedicated one's life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one's life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one's labors utterly forgotten?

The Russians, when I found them a few years later, worked on me in the same way. They seemed to regard fiction not as something decorative but as a vital moral-ethical tool. They changed you when you read them, made the world seem to be telling a different, more interesting story, a story in which you might play a meaningful part, and in which you had responsibilities.

Absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom.

Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing. Only

By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions.

Why sad? Don't be sad. If sad, will make everyone sad.

The thing about girls? Suzanne said. Is we are more content-driven.

Is this the baby? I said. Ma turned on me again. What do you think it is? she said. A midget that can't talk?

You were torturing a cat, she says. With a freaking prod. A prod I built myself in metal shop, he says. But of course you never mention that.

A house on the park. He'd seen it a million times. And now was in it. It smelled of man sweat and spaghetti sauce and old books. Like a library where sweaty men went to cook spaghetti.

I have lunch, flirt with some local grandmothers, undercut my flirting by crotching myself on the corner of a table as I leave. -- The Great Divider

This meal we just ate? says Aunt Lydia. In many countries, this sort of meal would only be eaten by royalty. There are countries where people could live one year on what we throw out in one week, says Grandpa Kirk. I thought it was they could live one year on what we throw out in one day, says Grandma Sally. I thought it was they could live ten years on what we throw out in one minute, says Uncle Gus. Well anyway, says Doris. We are very lucky.

Err in the direction of kindness.

But hereby resolve to write in this book at least twenty minutes a night. (If discouraged, just think of how much will have been recorded for posterity after one mere year!) (September 5) Oops. Missed a day.

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).