George Saunders Quotes

Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

I cannot go and tell women what to wear and what not to wear; you have to decide on your own.

No one can be free unless he is independent. Therefore, the first active manifestations of the child's individual liberty must be so guided that through this activity he may arrive at independence.

I'm not the kind of person that seeks out other people's opinions on my works.

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.

When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write, and if 10 people wanted to hear it, that's fine.

People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I've had a lot of voices tell me what I should be making. Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn't allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

It's funny, but no matter how good an artist is, it's not until he stands on his own two feet and sticks to his guns that things are going to come together.

A lot of people have ideas and opinions on what Avenged Sevenfold should be or what we should do, and I think our No. 1 rule is to always make sure we never listen to any of that and to always do what we believe.

Every creator has to follow what they believe. That's the message I would love for every single executive to get, to clearly understand, and every single producer out there.

In the end, for me, music is such an internal thing that to let the outside world influence would be against my modus operandi.

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.

A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred the human law in himself, his own individual will.

I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.

I wanted to retain my individuality. I was afraid of being hampered by studio policies. I knew if someone else got control, I would be restrained.

Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.

I live by my own rules (reviewed, revised, and approved by my wife).. but still my own.

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

I make the music that I want to make and make the show that I want to make. If you like it, you come. If you don't like it, you don't have to.