George Saunders Quotes

'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'

I don't look ahead to the future as a vast, endless one. I've begun to feel the calendar pages turning.

I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.

We don't have that much time left to do it. I'm 80. I wanted to be Walter Huston to his John Huston. I wanted him to direct me, not in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but something. We'll see. We can't predict anything.

The hard part is, of course, the proximity of death. The number has no meaning as long as you're fit and healthy. But you know that you only have so much time left and you don't know how much it is. It could be a very short time.

Mortality defines the human condition.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.

This whole thing about, 'Take it easy, you had a heart attack, you might die,' I don't have time to take it easy. I might go at any point now. So, I want to get as much done as I can!

When you're young, you think life is forever, but it's finite. I'm 68, so even by the maddest measurements, I'm in the last bit of life.

So I am concerned about the amount of time we have to make it, cause it doesn't matter how much money you have, you can't create more time.

The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.

The thought of my mortality - I think about it a lot. I find it motivating. It can be any time that your number's up.

At the age of 60, you see how short the runway is in front of you and how long the runway is behind you, and that you don't have much time left.

I do not really think about age. I am just sort of trying to get as much done before I get old and can't.

If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetimes. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children.

We all know we have a prescribed amount of time on Earth. We just don't know how much.

My father was 65 when I was born so we didn't have much time together.

There are all these things I want to accomplish. We never know how long we're going to get.

I'm not going to be here forever. I don't plan on going anywhere, but I don't know anybody for whom death is an exception.

I think there's a big price to pay for consciousness, knowing that it's all going to end and we're mortal. I envy dogs. They don't know they're getting old! And they don't know it's towards the end. I mean, they never think, 'I used to get by on 16 hours of sleep a day. Now, if I don't get 19, I'm a wreck.'

I think so much in time. I always have. Even at 20, I thought in terms of time, that I don't have a lot of time left. And I want to do so many things.

For many of us, we set out thinking there will be time in the future, and then suddenly we find ourselves at a moment when we have to acknowledge that the future isn't infinite.

The older I get, as well, bloody hell - time's running out. I just feel, jeez, there's so much to do. I'm not going to try to change the planet but make changes just in a small way.

You only have so much time on this planet.

In your twenties, you think you are immortal. In your thirties, you hope you are immortal.