George Saunders

Succeeding, whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it). ↗

— George Saunders

#inspirational

After that came her biggie: a triple murder--her dealer, the dealer's sister, and the dealer's sister's boyfriend. Reading that made me feel a little funny that we'd fucked and I'd loved her. ↗

— George Saunders

#humor #regret #love

I have plenty of friends," she says. "Name one." She looks at me. Which I guess is sort of sweet. ↗

— George Saunders

#friendship

A bad thing happened to you kids, Dad said. But it could have been worse. So much worse, Mom said. But because of you kids, Dad said, it wasn't. You did so good, Mom said. Did beautiful, Dad said. ↗

— George Saunders

#children #trauma #beauty

Her hair looked like her hair in the dream and her eyes looked like her eyes in the dream, and as for her body, he couldn't tell, she was wearing a mumu. ↗

— George Saunders

#dreams #love #obesity #dreams

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

— George Saunders

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

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

— George Saunders

#mall #nostalgia #other #remember #used

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

— George Saunders

#chekhov #ever #greatest #i #lived

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

— George Saunders

#cut #fiction #funny #happened #hasn

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