George Saunders Quotes

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

I was learning book-keeping at the age of 12, but it never stopped me from pursuing literature. Over the years, I grew to love the written word.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior.

You have to go through a mental and emotional process to recognize who you really are. I finally recognized that I cannot be defined by one country.

Writing songs helped me figure out how to communicate with other people. I finally figured out that if I could express something in a song, I could probably express it in my real life, too.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us.

The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

A lot of people think the best work I've done was nonfiction - the 'Brothers and Keepers' book. But I think of myself as a fiction writer. And I think, if my work is put in perspective, all the books would be a continual questioning of what's true and what's not true, what's documented and what's not documented.

If our psychology seems crude and weak in what it can say about the great human experiences, it is better to make that clear and to mark where we must go than to ignore it.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I've moved on to Plan B now, writing novels.

I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off.

My biggest bits of advice are, write as much as you can, finish what you start, get a thick skin, don't take crap from anyone, but also live your life and have fun. The stereotype of a writer holed up alone all day is really unhelpful. You can't write real people and real emotion if you don't let yourself experience them.

I see a skill developing of writing about not just feelings that I'm feeling, but things that I deeply care about as well.

I'm not a 'real rapper'; I just like to talk about what I've been through. When I was younger, I just said random, stupid lyrics and censored myself because I was worried about what people would think. But now I've become more mature with my words and uncensored.

Writers don't write about people they know. They write what they know about people.

I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.

Don't write about your most emotionally charged moment as a learning thing.

I write books because I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick. Writing a story... 'The Giver' or any other... is simply an exploration of the nature of behavior: why people do what they do, how it affects others, how we change and grow, and what decisions we make along the way.

That's why I have to be a fiction writer, because I can't remember what just happened or where I went last week or what movie I just watched with my husband. I'm better off just making things up.

What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.

To test a man's ego, simply ask him a complicated question. A good person will never be afraid to admit they don't know the answer to something. And only when a man has fully dismantled his ego, can he begin to be truly good.

The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.