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
kids games parent
You don't want to be that parent - the one who dresses his kid in a cloth sack when all the other kids are in Armani cloth sacks - especially in a time like ours, when materialism is not only rampant and ascendant but is fast becoming the only game in town.
honesty irony honest
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
enough words-love bits
The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.
prayer real believe
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.
jobs caring stories
To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway.
hey nostalgia remember
Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'
firsts stories accepted
Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'
voice ifs havens
If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.
way stories definitions
That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.
writing thinking remember
Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.
writing needs produce
When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.
jobs thinking artist
The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
facts comfortable
I'm comfortable with anything after the fact.
impossible-things desire rising
It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.