George Saunders Quotes

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been the reverberations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting and tormented self...I am unable to become what I see. I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, "won't go".

I always feel as if I'm a disappointment: that people want a grand dame in furs like Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Insecurity is a natural part of human nature, and there are times we feel our stories are not worth telling, so we turn to the people we admire for strength. If we dress like someone everyone thinks is cool, perhaps we'll be seen as cool.

Obviously the idea of being human is a very human idea.

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

I think my thing is that... I don't know. And that's why I don't wanna sing about 'This is me, this is who I am' because, like, even the question, 'Tell me about yourself' - what are you supposed to say? 'Ooh, I'm a happy girl, but I'm sad, too'? People are so complex.

There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.

Sometimes you think the whole world is falling, and it's only yourself that's leaning.

As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Everything human is alien to me.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

I think the desire to be with someone beautiful...I just had such a different experience growing up. To be in a position where you're lauded for things that you don't own - and don't think of yourself as - it's so bizarre.

Sometimes we become bound by other people's thoughts because we are not sure about ourselves.

It is easier to overcome people's judgments than to overcome our own self-judgment.

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.

If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they'd get along OK, but they'd both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.”

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.

Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.

Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them. You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.

Sometimes I feel kind of wrong here. I used to be normal, but now... I don't know. I feel like I should be one way, but I'm not." Toby stared at her. "I hear that." He sighed. "There are all these perfect people here. And... it's like, if you're not one of the,. then you're messed up. But I think, inside, the flawless-looking people are just as messed up as we are.

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

The amount of people that I feel like... I'm not being self-demeaning, but I actually feel like I'm not as cool as them, you know what I mean?