A Quote by George Saunders

You don't want to spend your life writing about stuff that doesn't matter. You want to try to pull out of the temporal mediocre and write in a way that is meaningful to everybody. This goes back to this idea of being intimate with your reader. Since we're all down here and we're all dying and aspiring and loving and feeling inadequate, all these things that we all are doing all the time, what a relief it is, when somebody looks at you and says, "Yeah, me too."
Loving your subject, you will write about it with the spontaneity and enthusiasm that will transmit itself to your reader. Loving your reader, you will respect him and want to please him. You will not write down to him. You will take infinite pains with your work. You will write well. And if you write well, you will get published.
It is really rare to find someone you really, really love and that you want to spend your life with and all that stuff that goes along with being married. I am one of those lucky people. And I think she feels that way too. So the romantic stuff is easy because you want them to be happy.
Nobody is in their right to tell anybody how to spend their free time. If you like to spend it with your family or your kids, fantastic. If you want to spend it with your girlfriend, great. If you want to spend it doing charitable work, great. If you want to spend it through endorsements and marketing stuff, great.
I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.
When guys come over to date my daughter, I'm going to tell them, 'I want you to go out and have a very good time with my daughter. I want you to enjoy yourself and have her home on time. If you abuse her in any way, I'm going to kill your mother and father, cut your back open, pull out your spine, and leave you in a wheelchair so you can think about what you did for the rest of your life. Now, go out and have a good time!'
I don't want to spend my time thinking about somebody else, I want to spend my time just being me and embracing life and living it and being there. At the end of the day, I'm responsible for my words and my thoughts and that's how I live.
I'm sure you feel differently about writing than you did when you first started. When you get older and your brain changes, you have to figure out how your job fits into your life as it changes, you know what I mean? I guess everybody goes through that stuff, and I'm no exception, always trying to figure out what I'm doing with music.
Sometimes in an incarnation you get a feeling of frustration. It is not working out the way you want. If you pull your power together and meditate, no matter what happens to you physically, you will have gained from this life.
Having a tough time, things aren't working out no matter what you try and do? That's because you are spending your whole life just doing things for yourself. That's a very limited view of your being.
Being a movie star isn't easy. It requires a lot of commitment and sacrifice. Your career goes through extreme ups and downs. You are judged all the time. Great things are written about you, but at the same time, not-so-good things are also said. At times, things are said about you that are completely untrue, and people mostly try to pull you down.
I don't want to be influenced as to what I write in the next book, to hear those voices in my head when I'm writing. The idea of second-guessing your reader is dangerous, trying to please some notional reader looking over your shoulder, instead of just yourself.
The way to write really good songs is to write about the things that happen in your life and where you are in the moment, and writing about stuff that happens in your 30s is not the sexiest song subject.
Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real." "Instead of asking 'what do I want from life?,' a more powerful question is, 'what does life want from me?'
This isn’t a game. We don’t want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you’ve spent most of your time here being mediocre.
Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It's also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.
I feel life is to be lived. You want to spend your time doing things and being with friends and all that.
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