George Saunders Quotes

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

The human word is neither immortal nor invulnerable; but it is the power that orders our chaos, and the light by which we live.

Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person.

Politics, which really is about the art of expression, ought to be a logical profession for writers (it's very hard to explain to politics- and policy-addicted people that language is the basis of all ideas - if you can't say it, you can't think it), instead of a refuge for lawyers and apparatchiks.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.

The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

He who writes badly thinks badly

Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them.

People like to say, 'What do you mean exactly?' I would answer, 'I mean, but not exactly.'

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Good dialogue is very important.

Language is a nice way to remember things.

Reading taught me how to write.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.