A Quote by George Saunders

So much of what I am doing in my fiction is just trying to get into interesting places in terms of language or form, places that don't bore me. And this happens via hundreds of quick micro-decisions that are done "to taste," so to speak. So the experience is one of groping toward that interesting place - trying to leap away from anything that seems boring, or about which I don't have strong opinions. Essentially trying to avoid that moment where, devoid of any strong feeling, I start conceptualizing.
It's just about trying to find material where I'm doing more than just being a plot device. I want to actually get to do scenes that go to interesting places and are challenging to me.
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
Research, for me, it's trying to get a mood, a mood of a place and style of people and it's also trying to boost my confidence and get the adrenalin flowing. I go off on my trips to odd places and dark corners, feeling somewhat apprehensive and nervous.
A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.
'The Ugly Truth' isn't trying to change the world with strong political opinions; it's just trying to entertain you with thoughts and ideas from my crazy mind!
I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying - trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.
For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.
I've been fortunate that I have good athletic ability, just in general. Quick, strong, able to bounce off players, trying to be strong in winning tackles, and annoying to play against, pretty much.
Who are we talking about? We're talking about the people that are trying to criminalize Donald Trump. We're talking about the people that are trying to impeach him. We're talking about people who are trying to via innuendo and leak and media assassination, we're dealing with people that are trying to destroy Donald Trump and his press secretary just signaled that they are serious about reaching out to these people to try to get certain things done, legislatively, like infrastructure or tax reform.
[W]hen you're shooting a doc, you're trying to class it up because you can. You know, you're trying to make this feel like cinematic experience. And when you're doing fiction you're trying to do the opposite thing you're trying to take this very artificial experience this very artificial experience and make it feel real and visceral.
I really wanted to know what happens in a place that is trying to build socialism, that's trying to construct some form of social justice. That's trying to feed people, to make health care and education a right.
You're trying to write about something that's sacred. You're trying to bring the seriousness of life and death to it, and you're trying to find a way to dramatize it, and you're trying to give language to it, which is inadequate. But it's important to try.
So yes, I'm trying to think about the connections between politics and poetry. There's an awful lot you could say here.Poetics is a form of poesis, a form of production-construction, but there might be ways of conceiving of that in a much more interesting manner. That's what I'm thinking about at the moment.
Meeting at our fault lines is much more interesting to me than meeting at shared values. I'm not trying to sell you something. If anything, I'm trying to show you where we are. There is nothing to hide.
I think subjectivity plays into everything. It's unavoidable; you couldn't avoid it if you tried. I think, potentially, a lot more commercial movies, it seems to be that the people making the films are trying to elicit the same reaction. I think a lot of the most interesting work in art and in films are often kind of polarized opinions and affect people in very different ways, which may be less successful commercially, but they elicit a dialogue that's quite interesting.
I kind of feel connected to all places at the moment, and I've done very interesting projects in both places (Israel and America).
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