#sen

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

So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go. ↗

— George Saunders

#any #approach #become #crystal #deep

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

Straight couples don't have to be monogamous to be married or married to be monogamous. Monogamy no more defines marriage than the presence of children does. Monogamy isn't compulsory and its absence doesn't invalidate a marriage. ↗

— Dan Savage

#children #compulsory #couples #defines #does

Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table. ↗

— Marilyn vos Savant

#across #blow #candle #dinner #flying

Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering. ↗

— Marilyn vos Savant

#ahead #enough #extend #know #sense

The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious. ↗

— Marilyn vos Savant

#between #cell #cell phone #chattering #difference

The freedom to be an individual is the essence of America. ↗

— Marilyn vos Savant

#essence #freedom #individual

I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania. ↗

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

#am #amateur #essentially #i #i am