George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saundersis an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to the weekend magazine of The Guardian until October 2008...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 December 1958
CityAmarillo, TX
CountryUnited States of America
trying stories firsts
As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.
grace cost facts
In fact unrestrained capitalism is quite cruel and the cost is on the individual human, on his or her grace.
writing given aspiration
I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
wind littles toys
My stories, I can understand them as a little toy that you wind up and you put it on the floor and it just goes under the coach. That I get. Beyond that, I'm a little lost.
littles stories short-story
I'm very happy - if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I'm thrilled.
thinking ideas people
I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people.
kids thinking years
I have been married to my wife, Paula, for 25 years. We have wonderful kids. Things are - it's been a really rich life, so I started thinking, is there a way to get valence a little more into the stories, the idea that, yes, things can go wrong, but also they can go right.
intimacy respectful reader
If I can be more efficient, I'm actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.
dancing fiction gravity
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.
writing trying fiction
The one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull - to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.
jobs stuff young-writers
Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.
jobs kindness real
It's not fiction's job to be photographically representative of reality. If I want to make a fictional world where there's no kindness, this doesn't mean I believe there's no kindness in the real world. In fact, what it may mean is that I very much value kindness. Like if you make a painting in which only greens are allowed, it wouldn't mean you don't believe in blue.
running reading writing
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.
character thinking trying
The writer has to make pleasure for the reader - which, I think, is done by taking one's character's seriously and taking one's readers seriously -don't condescend or try to be tricky. Be a friend to your reader - I'd say that's a pretty good first step.