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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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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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'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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Entertainment's definition has been reduced to making people happy.
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It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.
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I'm very happy being big and effeminate.
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Many investors make the mistake of buying high and selling low while the exact opposite is the right strategy.
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The history of cinema appears to be easy to do, since it is, after all, made up of images; cinema appears to be the only medium where all one has to do is re-project these images so that one can see what has happened.
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A man should practice what he preaches, but a man should also preach what he practices.
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Humans believe so many lies because we aren't aware. We ignore the truth or we just don't see the truth. When we are educated, we accumulate a lot of knowledge, and all that knowledge is just like a wall of fog that doesn't allow us to perceive the truth, what really is.
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Hamm: Can there be misery (he yawns) loftier than mine?
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People can pick and choose what they want out of it, but I feel like I'm a modern day Renaissance man of anything you could want me to do... except be six inches taller.
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Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.
