George Saunders Quotes

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

George Saunders

• Truth
• Humor
• Quicker

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Quotes to Explore

• We need to move past blame and make sure we are delivering care to our veterans.

  

  Ted Deutch
  • Past
  • Care
  • Blame

• There ought to be a thoughtful welfare-reform debate that doesn't turn into something that could be called scapegoating.

  

  Jack Kemp
  • Thoughtful
  • Debate
  • Turn

• There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

  

  P. J. Harvey
  • Music
  • Words
  • Change

• Everybody wants to defeat the defending champs.

  

  Victor Cruz
  • Defeat
  • Wants
  • Defending

• I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.

  

  Francesca Lia Block
  • Parents
  • Like
  • Poetry

• I genuinely want to do my best every day, and I genuinely want to enjoy life every day.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Life
  • Day
  • Best

• Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

  

  Garrett Hardin
  • Same
  • Behavior
  • Frontier

• To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.

  

  J. P. Donleavy
  • Poverty
  • Look
  • Irish

• I think God's wrath and purgatory are the only things keeping me on the straight and narrow. I like the idea of purgatory. It's like a cosmic do-over.

  

  Katee Sackhoff
  • God
  • Think
  • Me

• To make sense of bossiness, we need to tease apart two fundamental aspects of social hierarchy that are often lumped together: power and status. Power lies in holding a formal position of authority or controlling important resources. Status involves being respected or admired.

  

  Adam Grant
  • Important
  • Power
  • Together

• To too many people in India it suggests not only a building but a blend of tea. It is also cry of admiration as Wah Taj!, indicative of Mughal sophistication and elegance...There are several appropriations to the building name to brand names such as of hotels, tea, saffron, and bars of soap and so forth.

  

  Henry Saint Clair Fredericks
  • People
  • Tea

• All children are manipulators.

  

  Orson Scott Card
  • Children

• Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • Life
  • Work
  • Great

• 'You will be very welcome,' answered Dorothy, 'for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily.' 'They really are,' said the Lion, 'but that doesn't make me any braver, and as long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy.'

  

  L. Frank Baum
  • Long
  • Help
  • Lion

• A few first rate research papers are preferable to a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished. The latter are no credit to their writers and a waste of time to their readers.

  

  Claude Shannon
  • Time

• 'Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.'

  

  Lee Kuan Yew
  • Up
  • Sick

• Steak and its accompaniments - wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts - is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate.

  

  Danny Meyer
  • People
  • Wine

• I think the whole aspect of social networking is vulgar and repulsive in a lot of ways. But I also see why it's appealing - I've had that little high you get from posting stuff online. But then you think, 'Did I need to say that?' I've explored that enough to know to stay kind of quiet these days.

  

  Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails
  • Why
  • High

• If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.

  

  Derrick Jensen
  • Community

• I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it, and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work, but it ain't easy.

  

  Madeline Kahn
  • Work
  • Truth
  • Funny

• The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

  

  Edith Sitwell
  • Believe
  • Long
  • Truth

• Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.

  

  Han Suyin
  • World
  • Believe
  • Powers

• There's nothing more terrifying than an actor who comes with an idea.

  

  Lance Henriksen
  • Idea
  • Actor
  • Nothing

• Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.

  

  George Saunders
  • Truth
  • Humor
  • Quicker