A Quote by George Saunders
If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that's something that no one can deny.
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Transience is what is normal. The problem is that we are busily trying to create political structures and cultural expressions that deny that and to deny that is to deny the basic idea of what is human.
We're living history all the time, in the papers, in the news, you think about stuff and it goes into your brain and you think about it and it comes out somehow. You have an idea; you've heard a phrase, or you're angry, or something disturbs you, or something seems paradoxical to you, you explore that idea, much like a writer would explore maybe an idea through metaphor. Maybe artists use their vehicle to explore ideas, so I think the things that interest me are the kind of idea of continuous change and how nothing stays the same and it's always disintegrating into something more.
In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.
I usually have to find something where I go, "I have to do this." Sometimes you don't even know what the question you're trying to answer is, but you go, "This is something I need to explore and want to explore, and it's inside me in a way that I think I can do a good job with."
Because, you see, God - whatever anyone chooses to call God - is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.
One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!
I would not describe myself as a political writer except in the sense that the personal is political, which is something that I do strongly believe. And in that sense American Gods is a very personal novel and a political novel. I was trying to describe the experience of coming to America as an immigrant, the experience of watching the way that America tends to eat other cultures.
I feel like Obama in a way. His idea that hope means not shrinking from a fight; it's the courage to reach for something. My music is that. Those are principles I try to embody.
I hate to express political ideas directly in a book. I don't want my books to be seen as an expression of this or that political idea. At the same time I want to show a kind of rebellion and transgression, something further.
I've never conceptualized much of what I write about. Maybe, once I'm onto something, I'll conceptualize a finished record. I want the songs to tie together and make sense together. I'm not like, "Oh, I want to explore this idea." That's just not how the creative process works for me. It's more like something strikes me, or finds me, and then I wrestle with it after that. I don't sit back in my armchair, like, "What kind of philosophy can I explore today?"
For me, what is political is very personal. Politics are not this abstract idea. Laws are the rules that dictate how we live our lives. What we eat is political. How we dress is political. Where we live is political. All of these things are influenced by political decision-making, and it's important to be part of the process.
On just a personal level, since I was little, I've loved fairytales, especially this one, because it is about what goes into making a beast a beast. Do you start as a beast? Do you turn into a beast because of the way that people treat you? I think it's something that is really universal and hit a chord with me when I was little, and so, hopefully we can explore some of that.
I have a pretty positive view of environmental activism, but I didn't know much about the ELF. A lot of people make documentaries because they have something they want to say, but I make them because there's something I want to explore.
True Love comes into being when you practice the highest possible love in the lowest possible place. There you deal with impossible people and try to raise them into the highest possible people by showing them the highest possible standard. There is where True Love can be found and can start.
Of course, every movie is political, some people just deny it because they like the world the way it is.
My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering.
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