#pre

The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. ↗

— John Ralston Saul

#comfort #doubt #expressions #intercourse #job

Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen. ↗

— John Ralston Saul

#capable #citizen #democracy #equilibrium #humanist

People are starting to see that now and I've learnt more from those 10 rounds than I have in my previous 10 fights. ↗

— Billy Joe Saunders

#i #learnt #more #now #people

Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up. ↗

— George Saunders

#early #i #i write #know #meaning

I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. ↗

— George Saunders

#beautifully #because #bit #down #feel

If death is in the room, it's pretty interesting. But I would also say that I'm interested in getting myself to believe that it's going to happen to me. I'm interested in it, because if you're not, you're nuts. It's really de facto what we're here to find out about. ↗

— George Saunders

#also #because #believe #death #facto

It seems to me a worthy goal: try to create a representation of consciousness that's durable and truthful, i.e., that accounts, somewhat, for all the strange, tiny, hard-to-articulate, instantaneous, unwilled things that actually go on in our minds in the course of a given day, or even a given moment. ↗

— George Saunders

#actually #consciousness #course #create #day

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

The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with that-which-is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. ↗

— George Saunders

#arises #asking #become #close #constantly

The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture. ↗

— George Saunders

#beloved #constant #culture #details #exaltation