#k

I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that's my issue. ↗

— George Saunders

#big #chicago #cranky #dear #fan

I didn't want kids to think that to be happy, they had to be famous or rich or live in the big city. ↗

— Dan Savage

#big #big city #city #famous #had

I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs. ↗

— George Saunders

#because #control #control freak #did #drink

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

When I'm explaining something to you, if I'm being long-winded, and twisty in a non-productive way, I could make you feel vaguely insulted. And you'd have a right to be. ↗

— George Saunders

#could #explaining #feel #i #insulted

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

— George Saunders

#experience #haven #lack #read #voice

More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off? ↗

— George Saunders

#days #doing #each #evil #find

My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect. ↗

— George Saunders

#am #been #confidence #dark #dark side

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

— George Saunders

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

Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so. ↗

— George Saunders

#fiction #god #had #i #i think