A Quote by George Saunders

The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He's like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled "poor." He doesn't have any bad habits. He's never cranky with his kids.
I always liked it when people go back in time to discover things about themselves, like with 'A Christmas Carol' and you're getting a tour of your life by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
I never graduated high school; they had to change the Ivy League rules. During my tenure at Brown, I helped them become the number one Ivy League school.
No doubt, the White House thinks the American people know Obama's story. But since the Inauguration, we've seen only the president's present: his perfect family, his Ivy League elegance, his effortless mastery of complex issues. We never see him sweat. And we forget that he ever had to struggle.
I never went to camp as a kid. I couldn't get into an Ivy League school. I wouldn't join a biker club.
I've always felt like a kid, and I still feel like a kid, and I've never had any problem tapping into my childhood, and my kid side. And I think that's a very universal thing, I don't think it's unique to me at all. People I've talked to in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s have all told me "You know, I still feel 20." So I don't expect that I'm going to be any different.
The way my family always did Christmas was on Christmas Eve, it wasn't really centered around a dinner on Christmas Eve. It was more about keeping the kids calm. Sometime after dark is when we were going to open all the presents underneath the tree from Mom, Dad and the kids and everything - just the family presents was every Christmas Eve.
People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy."
December used to be very difficult for me. For many years, I fought the transition to the new year, was generally exhausted at the end of the year, and just wanted to hide. I described myself as a 'cranky Jewish kid who felt left out by Christmas.'
I didn't know Penn was an Ivy League school - I didn't know what the Ivy League was. When I got in, they sent me the package, and the tuition was my mother's salary for a year. My mom said, 'We can't afford it.' So I went to the library and found several scholarships and grants and was able to cover 90 percent of my education that way.
That was the thing about Prabhupada, you see. He didn't just talk about loving Krishna and getting out of this place, but he was the perfect example. He talked about always chanting, and he was always chanting. I think that that in itself was perhaps the most encouraging thing for me. It was enough to make me try harder, to be just a little bit better. He was a perfect example of everything he preached.
I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.
When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it's not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.
It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn't any solution to this.
He never hurries. He never shows his cards. He always hangs up first....Like when we first started talking on the phone, he would always be the one who got off first. When we kissed, he always pulled away first. He always kept me just on the edge of crazy. Feeling like I wanted him too much, which just made me want him more....[It was] excruciating and wonderful. It feels good to want something that bad. I thought about him the way you think about dinner when you haven't eaten for a day and a half. Like you'd sell your soul for it.
This is the great thing about writing for kids. Adults might not do anything if they recognized me. But if they do see me, and they're with a kid, they'll tell the kid who I am. They think they should give that to the kid. So generally that sends the kid over.
I don't have any bad habits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they're all right for me.
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