George Saunders

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain. ↗

— George Saunders

#explain #moments #sum #sum total #total

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. ↗

— George Saunders

#chekhov #ever #greatest #i #lived

I could actually care less about the poor. We have some living near us, and pee-yew. They are always coming and going to their three or four jobs at all hours of the day and night. Annoying! ↗

— George Saunders

#actually #always #annoying #care #coming

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. ↗

— George Saunders

#character #drama #feel #foster #half

I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph. ↗

— George Saunders

#i #lot #novel #now #paragraph

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience. ↗

— George Saunders

#experience #haven #lack #read #voice

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. ↗

— George Saunders

#fiction #kind #model #ought #out

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore. ↗

— George Saunders

#cut #fiction #funny #happened #hasn

Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?' ↗

— George Saunders

#mall #nostalgia #other #remember #used

So I may not have had a gothic childhood, but childhood makes its own gothicity. ↗

— George Saunders

#gothic #had #i #i may not #makes