George Saunders Quotes

Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.

To write anything decent, it's hard. Anything you want to be good is hard.

Writing's another expression of art, really, that I'm just kind of discovering as I go.

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.

One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I'm writing about. And then two, I have to have a formal idea. Something has to be being worked out in poetry.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.

I like making movies. I like the process. I like trying out new ideas, and if they don't work, they don't work. That's the reason I generated the money in the first place, to be able to try things. That's where I spend my money.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

Writing is the basis of all, because creating something that didn't even exist before is like taking an empty canvass. It is a wonderful thing to make something out of nothing. You've got an empty page, you've got an idea, and then you start typing and that is the most thrilling thing of all. And then if it becomes a movie or something else that's a plus, but the original writing of it is what's very exciting.

I'm not working on anything. I was trying to write something new . . . I guess the goal for me now, at least at this point, is to try to direct again.

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

Basically my personality, and my talent, and my lyrics are so outstanding that what listeners can tell is that I put so much hard work into what I'm doing because it comes through my music. So I feel that my music for one will get my point across. I write from my heart and my spirit... You know what I'm sayin'? Some people don't know their place, they're just like "Oh I rap because I'm tryin' to get this or that, and I'm doin' this because I want to get money.

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where , the painting is always saying, 'What do you want from me? I can only be a painting.' You have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point.

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.