We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
Quote by George Saunders
Click on the picture of George Saunders quote you want to see a larger version.
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.
Click on the picture of George Saunders quote you want to see a larger version.
George Saunders Quotes
- Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
- I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.
- I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society.
- I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations.
- If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.
- Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.
- A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.
- The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.
- It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.
- The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.
- The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.
Best Quotes
- I always wanted to be honest with myself and to those who have had faith in me.
- The serve, I was too young and too small and... not enough powerful to have a good serve when I was young, so my forehand was always my signature shot. So I used to always run around my backhand, you know, use my forehand as much as I could, and so that's why I think it's my strength also today, you know.
- I did all the right things in so many tournaments. But like I said, sometimes in sports it just goes the other way. Maybe you've already won so much that it evens it out a bit sometimes. I don't know.
- I used to get nervous, you know if my parents would come watch. And then I would get nervous if my friends came and watched. Today it's not a problem anymore actually, because now I enjoy it. I see that they, you know, respect me immensely, and I try to put on a good show and show that I can still play very good tennis.
- When I won in 2003, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would win Wimbledon and have my kids seeing me lift the trophy, so this is pretty surreal. And yeah, I was almost shocked in the moment that it all came together so nicely.
- Before, I guess, mum and dad were everything, but now, in my case, I had two new girls and all of a sudden they're completely dependent on you and there's a third generation. It's a funny shift all of a sudden. You have the babies, you have yourself and then you have your parents.
- My dad said if you become a tennis professional just make sure you get into the top hundred, because you have to make a little bit of money. You make a living so you can pay your coaching and, you know, your travels.
- When you do something best in life, you don't really want to give that up - and for me it's tennis.
- When there is nothing to talk about don't force yourself to say anything because it may land you in trouble.
- It’s crazy how people say, "I rely on facts," And believe thier television sets.
- Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.