A Quote by George Saunders

There are things that are shadow sides of the creative energy that are negative and all that kind of stuff. The only thing that I say to myself is, in the spirit of that quote from the Gnostic Gospels: Writing is a way to let all that stuff out into the sun.
I guess my performance at school was doing school musicals, so I was a knight as well at the back of the stage in Camelot. It was all those kind of things. It wasn't the stuff that I wanted to do. The real funny character stuff came out when I was in control of it myself and writing it myself.
I feel like one thing that a lot of creative people go through is that they feel like they don't have the right to be creative or to put their stuff out there. I'm glad that blogging from a young age kind of got that out of the way for me.
For sure, you don't believe the good stuff. I mean, the good stuff is just insane - wacky. If you don't take it too much to heart, it does help when the negative stuff hits. And you know the negative stuff is coming. It's got to! What comes up must come down.
What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.
The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
I really don't listen to any of the negative stuff. Anything that's positive, that's kind of the stuff I'm listening to, and that's kind of what, like, brings you up.
I'm an actress, and I write, and I produce stuff. I have a guitar, and I have my knitting stuff. I have a lot of things going on; I love to not ever put all my energy into one thing fully.
All the work I do is personal, so the good stuff and the bad stuff that you see in there is all good stuff and bad stuff that I have, and part of the journey, for me, has been to embrace these things that I find embarrassing about myself: my stubbornness, my ego, my maudlin-ness - these things that I see myself do, and I go, 'Oh, David, stop that!'
The kinds of scenes I like most are the ones where you just bury yourself in there. So I wouldn't say that's the only way to be funny, but that's my favorite way to play stuff, to try to put myself in a situation where that kind of acting is necessary.
I consider myself pretty lazy, but I look back and check out the stuff I've done, and I say, 'God, that's a lot of stuff for a lazy guy.' It's a paradox, I suppose, being both things.
There'd be days I was in the locker room with my dad doing media, and there'd be other days that I'd be with my mom in the press box and just kind of looking at stuff from that point of view. I'd see guys writing stories after the game and stuff like that. So it was cool to me to see both sides.
We keep the negative stuff because it's the negative stuff that's going to, you know, potentially kill us. That fin in the water - maybe it is a shark. That yellow thing behind the tree - maybe it is a lion. You need to be scared.
I'm discovering my sexual side, and exploring relationships. You know, sensual stuff. And I'm discovering a lot of sides of myself, stuff I've buried. So the music is also therapeutic, to come to terms with things. And I feel now like my head is in the right space.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Normally you hear about Southeast London, and you hear about all the stuff that goes on down there, all the negative things, and the tabloids kind of stay away from all the positive things that happen that I see every day, which kind of outshines the negative.
There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing.
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