A Quote by George Saunders

I really wanted to be allowed to the [writer's] table. So it makes me happy to be at the table. It sounds a little shallow, but if I imagine the shadow life, where I didn't get that chance, and all the ways my negative inclinations would have bloomed if I hadn't gotten the attention, but also the creative outlet ... I'm not actually that happy. I have multiplicities. My happiness blooms and it wilts.
I grew up with 'Life' magazine on the coffee table, Life cereal on the breakfast table, and the game of Life on the card table. People were just so happy to be alive, I guess.
Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.
When you realise that money doesn't actually make you happy, it's a quick fix to have things you've always wanted, but then when you have it, you realise that's not what actually makes you happy. It's more about having a great marriage and happy children; that's what life's all about.
We put each other's happiness before our own, so I would prefer that Spencer was super happy... So, like I always want him to be happy and he always wants me to be happy, which in turn, makes a very happy house.
And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it and deal with the negative consequences of that. And there are negative consequences. I mean, there are. But, it's also true that you wouldn't be interviewing me right now if I had worked at the post office. You wouldn't. I would be still writing, but I wouldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, because I wouldn't have had the time.
The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."
I used to let other people's struggles affect my happiness. If they weren't happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn't happy, I didn't want anyone around me to be happy.
Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the best place to find out.
At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it?
What I've also noticed is the term happiness, or happy is intimidating to some people. Some people deny that it's even possible to be happy, or to achieve happiness. Happiness sounds like this magical destination that you arrive at and then everything is sort of solved, or it's different.
This game in a lot of ways, isn't that complex. You bring energy to the table and you've got a chance. You bring fundamentals to the table and you've got a chance. It's not always about scheme and all that magic-behind-the-curtain stuff.
Most of my career is spent in a meeting... dressed sharply, looking really great; negotiating over a table, strategizing or coming up with new marketing plans or new ideas. And that makes me really, really happy.
This is how the world changes - little by little, table by table, meal by meal, hour by hour. This is how we chip away at isolation, loneliness, fear. This is how we connect, in big and small ways - we do it around the table.
A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you're satisfied one moment - saying yes, it's a good meal, makes me happy - well, that's not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven't really experienced ups and downs yet. I'm not exactly sure what happiness even means. I don't know if I personally could define it.
My main goal in life is to just be happy. I don't compromise my happiness for anything. If I find what makes me happy I'm going to do that. That's really going with the flow of life. As far as like the mainstream stuff, if my destiny takes me there and I end up going that route, then that's fine.
Acting is such a huge part of my life. It really allows me to have a creative outlet and to actually be able to have an outlet to discuss openly the things that truly I think are relevant in the world, that make a difference.
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