George Saunders Quotes

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.

I love to write. I love it. I mean there's nothin in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it.

I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

I do like writing. When I was a little kid, I used to love writing funny, silly stories - and my mom would always encourage it. I don't know why I ever stopped!

Hitch your unconscious mind to your writing arm.

I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write.

Generally, I find that when you're writing and having fun with the writing, that energy and dynamism is going to come out in the text one way or another.

The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way.

It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.

I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard. Writing became more like eavesdropping and less like inventing a nuclear bomb.

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 don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.

[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.

I felt like if I could get the epiphany out of the way in my drafting process, through my eighth or tenth draft, then that can just be part of how I've assembled the character, and then we can move on and move forward with it. In general, I don't ever want to feel smarter than my characters, because I just feel like that's not a great way to write a story.

It feels like when I write, it's intuitive. This is true of Frances, and it's true of this [The Funniest Movie Of The Summer].