George Saunders Quotes

Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else.

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

Everyone has their own different life experiences which make them who they are. No two people's life experiences are the same. And mine are just unique to me.

There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals.

Things aren't interesting if you level them. It's the voice that's interesting.

You're really looking for the truth of what the piece is about. And that's going to be different for different people.

We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.

There's a billion and a half Muslim experiences. All I can give you is my one weird, self-examining perspective.

Your dreams are always going to seem much more profound to you then they are to your friend.

Being the best was as equal to being in the middle, which was equal to being the worst. All were merely a state of being. It was how a person felt in that state and why they were in that state that was the important thing.

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel.

... whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.

Something that works for one person could be a disadvantage to another.

Because the life that I live - the life that we all live - is filtered through [one's own] experience. It isn't necessarily optimistic when you look at the political phenomena, the different things that are going on in the world.

You can disagree with another person's opinions. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can't disagree with their experience.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.

The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.

Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? Are all sevens equal? When the convict ponders the light is it the same light that shines on you?

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is...the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.

Apart from man, no being wonders at its own experience.

Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.

You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.