George Saunders Quotes

She's not a saint, and she's not what you think She's an actress, whoa She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress

You see a Donald Trump on TV, just like you'd see Joan Rivers on TV when she was living, and you see a real person. That's the Donald Trump that I know.

I definitely think there is a shift happening right now in terms of visibility, but there's still a choice you make as a public figure on what to do or how to present your sexuality.

You never see Beyonce stumbling out of a club drunk and on drugs without underwear on - nor do you see Justin Timberlake pashing 5 chicks in a club. You never hear them slagging anyone in the media...They are composed and somewhat mysterious and that fascinates me!

This woman [Hillary Clinton] has been in public, has been a nationally known figure for over 30 years. Why does anybody have to tell us who she is? And why does she need to be "humanized"?

It's strange for my friends when they see me on TV and in magazines, because the person that they see doing interviews and pictures on the red carpet is not the person that they know.

Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.

Since I was 18, I've been under orders from magazines and newspapers - chiefly The New York Times and Rolling Stone - to step into the lives of musicians, actors, and artists, and somehow find out who they really are underneath the mask they present to the public. But I didn't always succeed.

I don't mind being the center of attention as a character but in real life it's not for me.

For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye.

Take any celebrity - all we really know is what they choose to tell us or what they show us in public.

Maybe I was always more than one person, or even two. Maybe being on TV was just my job. People find it hard to get their heads around that. A couple of times I have shone a light on the other sides of my life, but I have learned to be cautious about that. Because people are only comfortable with the Noel Edmonds they see on television.

Ask people who know him for a description of Bob Dylan outside the prerogatives of fame and the obligations of art, and they have to stop and think; there's just not that much left.

I think Lena Dunham, the public figure, is - I hate the word 'brand,' but I'm going to use it - it's such a brand that is so tethered to her public persona and to 'Girls', but also this progressive politics that she's been more vocal about.

Very few people ever meet celebrities. All we really know is what we read about them and the most memorable lines are jokes. That's how we tend to define what we think of a public figure.

Well, it hurts my feelings because the person that I read about sometimes in these gossip magazines is not the person who I am. So I don't want, you know, my fans to think that's how I am.

The public me, the one named Elizabeth Taylor, has become a lot of hokum and fabrication - a bunch of drivel - and I find her slightly revolting.

The whole celebrity thing didn't work for Hillary Clinton. She tried that in her campaign and it failed.

I get nervous when I do print interviews because I know that whatever I say is going to be shown through the lens of whomever I'm talking to. So I've read a lot of different versions of myself - and all of them are true because it's all opinion and they're as accurate as it can ever be. But I don't think that I've been deft at hiding parts of my personality.

One of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there's Barack Obama the person and there's Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they're responding to this character that they're seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents.

I think a lot of people assume from my music and stuff I'm constantly talking about deep and meaningful things, but then with my friends I'm just a class clown.

People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible.

George W. Bush is a person who is totally disinterested in the world, uneducated. I'm not saying he's stupid. I don't think he's stupid. He's crafty as hell, but he projects well on television. And that's the real big problem. He is the perfect "what, me worry?" president.

I decided a long time ago I didn't want to be a star personality and live my life out in public. I don't think it's a good idea to wave personality about like a flag and become labeled.

I think women see me on the cover of magazines and think I never have a pimple or bags under my eyes. You have to realize that's after two hours of hair and makeup, plus retouching. Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.