George Saunders Quotes
Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.
Quotes to Explore
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We need to move past blame and make sure we are delivering care to our veterans.
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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.
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Everybody wants to defeat the defending champs.
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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.
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I genuinely want to do my best every day, and I genuinely want to enjoy life every day.
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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.
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To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.
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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.
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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.
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All children are manipulators.
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Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
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'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.'
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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.
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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.
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There are a lot of complaints by the older generation about the lack of action in this generation. My retort: give these people something to be engaged in. Cutting a check is not engaging.
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I usually kept everybody at arm's distance.
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I'd rather lose large than win slightly. I think life is an oil painting, not a watercolor.
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When I feel lost and can't make a decision, I just stop and get quiet. I take a time-out.
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I saw the Sex Pistols, and they were terrible.
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As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.
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True honor is attained by teaching our minds to recognize truth, and training our hearts to love it.
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...Why are all these masks winking?" Jason pointed around the room with his fork. The loremaster dabbed at his mouth with a frilled purple napkin. "One eye is open to all truth, the other closed to all deception.
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The reason why books endure is because there are enough people who like them. It's the only reason why books last.
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Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.
