I loved Monty Python for the wordplay--this sense that you didn’t have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny. - George Saunders
When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average. And is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo. - George Saunders
A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief. - George Saunders
. . . Absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom. - George Saunders
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up. - George Saunders
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. - George Saunders
The traveller must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalisation. But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops. - George Saunders
I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing. - George Saunders
I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Diverse Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence. - George Saunders
...But all that power has culminated in gentleness. It is as if that is the point of power: to allow one to access the higher registers of gentleness. - George Saunders
Fiction is an urgent business. It is the Dying Us telling stories to the Dying Us, trying to crack the nonsense in our heads open with a big hammer pronto, before Death arrives. - George Saunders
A story is a really weird art object that should contain life but not be enslaved by the banality. - George Saunders