George Saunders Quotes

If I don't stay creative and if I don't stay in the studio and keep writing and recording, I get kind of depressed. I can't quite remember what I'm supposed to be doing with myself.

I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and even the positive 'stress' of intense happiness, can compel me to express myself through the written word.

I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.

When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.

'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

When I'm not writing, I feel an awareness that something's missing. If I go a long time, it becomes worse. I become depressed. There's something vital that's not happening.

In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way of postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

I need to write to be happy.

I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine.

There's no better way to process pain than to write.

Every movie I do, I always use things that have happened in my life. Funny moments, anything. If it just sticks out I'll write it down and use that, too, because it has to come out of you. But no one can work when they're depressed. I don't think I'd physically be able to do it if I were depressed.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

I can say I'd honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I've written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

If it weren't for painting, I wouldn't live; I couldn't bear the extra strain of things.

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

If I stopped writing and being at my piano, I wouldn't know how to live. It's your best friend.

I hardly ever write when I'm just feeling great.

I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I write really scathing, angry stuff when I'm in a better mood, and then uplifting and happy stuff when I'm at the absolute bottom.

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.

The best I can say is that it's better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It's better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily.

I wasn't creative when I was depressed. When my depression got treated, I was creative again.

I just feel very lucky to be able to write fiction because I think, otherwise, I would have had to spend a fortune on a psychiatrist - and I still wouldn't get 1/100th of what I get writing fiction.

Acting is an incredibly gratifying, creative experience when you're doing it. But in the off-season, you want to scratch that itch, and writing has become that to me. It's a really pure form of creativity. It's good for my mental health in the same way reading books is good for me. It makes the day brighter.