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George Saunders Quotes about Art

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So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.

So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.

George Saunders
Art, Life Is Short, Long
Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.

For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.

George Saunders
Art, Intelligent, Games

Now I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what's inside the box bears some linear resemblance to "real life" -- he can put whatever he wants in there. What's important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit.

George Saunders
Art, Real, Black
George Saunders (2012). “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”, p.78, A&C Black

Art is not some inessential frippery - it is the nation's means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one's nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.

George Saunders
Art, Mean, Kind
Source: www.macleans.ca

A work of art is something produced by a person, but is not that person — it is of her, but is not her. It’s a reach, really — the artist is trying to inhabit, temporarily, a more compact, distilled, efficient, wittier, more true-seeing, precise version of herself — one that she can’t replicate in so-called ‘real’ life, no matter how hard she tries. That’s why she writes: to try and briefly be more than she truly is.

George Saunders
Art, Real, Writing

In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.

George Saunders
Art, Believe, Thinking
"Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing". Book by Jamie Holmes, 2015.

I think people have come to expect that in artistic representation; that every work of art should be a work of extravagant hope.

George Saunders
Art, Thinking, People
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself.

George Saunders
Art, Writing, Frustration
Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.

The bottom line for me is that life is short and art is long.

George Saunders
Art, Life Is Short, Long
"George Saunders on Trump, Mystery, and Why He Rejects Social Media". Interview with Catherine Woodiwiss, sojo.net. August 30, 2016.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

George Saunders
Art, Space, Kind
Interview with George Saunders, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 27, 2016.

I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, "Art, don't come in here." But that's maybe a deeper question.

George Saunders
Art, Real, Wonder
"Susan Sarandon". Interview with George Saunders, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 27, 2016.

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