George Saunders Quotes

I understand people have preconceived notions of who I am or what I do.

I think people think we're all sipping martinis by the pool.

People look at me, and they go, 'You're white, you're smart, you must have went to college. You must have grown up with money.'

People like to build their own story about my life. I don't know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

It's always nice when people discover I'm a normal person and not, because of my appearance, a half-crazed lunatic who may stab them with a Bic pen.

A lot of liberals think all the Trump voters are a part of the alt right, neo Nazi camp, which is not true. That's a tiny, tiny slice.

Most of the generation Trump - the alt-right people, the people who like me - they're not anti-Semites. They don't care about Jews. I mean they may have some assumptions about Jews. They may have some prejudice about Jews that the Jews run everything. Well, we do.

Dont talk to the crazy kids. I longed to shout back that we weren't crazy. I'd mistaken her kid for a ghost, that's all.

Why can't we have racism that's ignorant but nice? You could have stereotypes that are positive about race. You could say, "Those Chinese people, they can fly!" "You know about the Puerto Ricans? They're made of candy!"

You know, people tend to get stereotyped for about forty percent of their behavior, so if you're completely crazy forty percent of the time you'll get stereotyped as crazy, even if you're totally boring thirty percent of the time and just studious the other thirty percent of the time.

In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.

Michael Bloomberg is a sensible guy. He's just privileged. He's a goddamn billionaire, and he or his family members have never had to deal with anything as remotely degrading as stop and frisk. So he has no point of reference.

Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it.

White folks' greed runs a world in need.

I also acknowledge that prejudice runs very deep in our society. And, in the real world, discrimination rears its ugly head in the shadows, where it's very difficult to root it out.

Brighton has two universities. It's got a massive young, middle-class community, and the largest gay community in the UK. The result of which is a huge recreational drug market. It's the favoured place to live in the UK for first division criminals.

Imagine Americans who go to Paris. Why would you want to go where someone's going to disparage you? Why would you go anywhere where they treat you bad? Well, that's how it is for us to go to Mexico. You have to be on your guard, because I think the Mexicans are harder on the Mexicans, the Mexican-Americans. They don't see us as Mexican. I think part of it's a class issue and a color issue. We're more connected to their servants, so what are we doing staying at a nice hotel? There's a kind of shame.

People are threatened by me. Rich white, rich blacks, it doesn't matter.

No one can believe I might have a brain. Because I'm really tall, I'm really blonde, I have big muscles, and kill people for a living. There you go. If anybody's going to be assumed to be stupid, it's me. I don't know what my IQ score is, but I did study for five years at college. And I'm proud of my chemical engineering degree. I haven't done anything with it, but it's a card up your sleeve for later in life. It's nice to have, just in case.

George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump. Take your pick. They are hated; they are not opposed, and I wish an even bigger percentage of the American people would figure this out. The American people are running around thinking that all the hate and the racism and all these other isms are located on the Republican Party side.

There will always be people that will have assumptions about you, about my character, my personality, or that I might put on a show of being gay or something, or that I play up stereotypes or anything like that. It's always funny to me that those people are typically the people that know me the least.

If someone was to tell you that you were a witch, I think that it would be somewhat like, "You've got to be kidding me! I'm out of here! You're crazy!"

Stereotypes wouldn't be so bad if black people were nicer, in general.

I can be very polite, and I think that people can confuse that for all sorts of things... But I'll take that over people assuming that I'm smart just because I'm short and rude.

Be careful of men who are bald and rich; the arrogance of "rich" usually cancels out the nice of "bald".