Background Image
...
If I Can Be More Efficient, I'm Actually Being More Respectful To The Reader, Which Then Implies A Greater Intimacy With The Reader.
-George Saunders
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

If I Can Be

George Saunders
...
If I Can Be More Efficient, I'm Actually Being More Respectful To The Reader, Which Then Implies A Greater Intimacy With The Reader.

Understanding the Quote: "if i can be more efficient, i'm actually being more respectful to..."

This quote by George Saunders reflects deeply on the theme of intimacy. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Intimacy, Respectful, Reader, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how George Saunders interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About George Saunders

George Saunders is celebrated for insightful thoughts on intimacy and respectful. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 4
Topic
Intimacy
Respectful
Reader
More From George Saunders
I Think If Someone Could Demonstrate To Me That Fiction Did No Good, I Would Still Do It, Because I Think It Does Good For Me.
Thinking
Doe
Fiction
If I Can Be More Efficient, I'm Actually Being More Respectful To The Reader, Which Then Implies A Greater Intimacy With The Reader.
Intimacy
Respectful
Reader
It's On Us To Investigate Ourselves For Any Lingering Sense That We Are 'giving' Equality. We Are Not. It Is Already Given. And Not By Us.
Giving
Given
Lingering
I'm Not Thinking Much About Overall Themes Or Preoccupations Or Anything Like That. Instead I'm Just Trusting That, If I'm Working Hard, Various Notions And Riffs And Motifs And So On Are Very Naturally Suffusing The Stories And The Resulting Book.
Book
Thinking
Stories
I Sometimes Think That I Can't Do The Bigger Thing That [zadie Smith] Do So Beautifully, As In Swing Time, With So Much World In It And So Much Rapturous Paint Thrown Around. I Don't Think It Would Be Possible To Write A Book On That Scale With As Much Ocd As I Have.
Book
Writing
Thinking
One Of The Principals Of Composition, I Would Say, In Fiction, Is You Want To Do What You Can Do A Lot Of. You Want To Do What You're Enthusiastic About And What Rings Your Bell. In This Case, Almost Every Decision I Made Was On That Basis.
Decision
Enthusiastic
Rings
Being In Church So Often, Spending Those Hours Sitting In Front Of A Highly Symbolic Array Of Objects, Hearing Those Beautiful Texts - It Teaches A Kid That There Are Important Truths Beyond The Literal Ones, And That We Have Ways To Access Those Truths That Are, Let's Say, Super-rational.
Beautiful
Kids
Important
Sometimes I Just Turn On The Tv And I'm Like, Wait A Minute, That Guy [donald Trump]? It's Incredible That He Did All Those Things And He Still Won. It's Hard To Process.
Guy
Waiting
Tvs
There Comes That Phase In Life When, Tired Of Losing, You Decide To Stop Losing, Then Continue Losing. Then You Decide To Really Stop Losing, And Continue Losing. The Losing Goes On And On So Long You Begin To Watch With Curiosity, Wondering How Low You Can Go.
Tired
Long
Curiosity
I'm Very Happy - If I Can Do Even A Little Bit Of Work To Get The Short Story Out More, I'm Thrilled.
Stories
Littles
Short Story
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.
Ideas
Political
Want
I Read Rand And Thought, "i Want To Be One Of The Earth Movers, The Scientific People Who Power The World. I Don't Want To Be One Of These Lisping Liberal Artsy Leeches." So I Was Working Against My Actual Abilities.
People
Leeches
World
I Was A Big And Un-ironic Fan Of Dear Abby When I Was A Kid In Chicago. I Think I Sort Of Internalized Her. So I Have This Inner Abby: Cranky, Proper, Folksy Yet Scathing, With A Beehive Hairdo. But That's My Issue.
Kids
Thinking
Issues
I Think The Trick Of Being A Writer Is To Basically Put Your Cards Out There All The Time And Be Willing To Be As In The Dark About What Happens Next As Your Reader Would Be At That Time. And Then You Can Really Surprise Yourself. There's That Cliche, "no Surprise For The Writer, No Surprise For The Reader!"
Dark
Thinking
Surprise
I Think The Wave Of Social Media Rejection Is Coming. I Think There Will Be A Big Reaction Against It. It's Just Like Sugar- - Mean, I Loved It As A Kid.
Mean
Kids
Thinking
When You Talk About A Reader Being Emotionally Moved, A Feeling Of Empathy, I Think That Comes Out Of That Line-by-line Respect For Reader. That's Actually Where It All Comes From.
Thinking
Empathy
Feelings
In My Personal And Spiritual Life, I Reject That. I Don't Believe In That. I'm Always Trying To Get My Mind Into A Less Judgmental Place, Making Less Rigid Judgments About Things Like "perverse" Versus "pure." But In Terms Of Prose, Those Sorts Of Oppositions Seem To Work.
Spiritual
Believe
Always Trying
From The Perspective Of Someone With Two Grown And Wonderful Kids, That Your Instincts As Parents Are Correct: A Minute Spent Reading To Your Kids Now Will Repay Itself A Million-fold Later, Not Only Because They Love You For Reading To Them, But Also Because, Years Later, When They’re Gone And Miles Away, Those Quiet Evenings, When You Were Tucked In With Them, Everything Quiet But The Sound Of The Page-turns, Will, Seem To You, I Promise...... Sacred.
Reading
Love You
Kids
My Mind Goes Really Quickly And I Tend To Talk Really Fast, As You've Probably Heard, I Sometimes Lose Track Of My Syntax, As I'm Talking That Fast. The Only Thing I Try To Do, Well, It's Slow Down, But Also I Do Something When I'm Reading That's Similar To When I'm Writing A Section, Which Is To Really Try To Imagine You On The Other Side, In A Certain Way, As An Intelligent, Sympathetic Presence Who's Rooting For Me To Tell You A Good Story.
Reading
Writing
Intelligent
I'm Repledging Myself To Human-scale Values. As A Fiction Writer, The Best Data Comes Through The Senses And Is Then Processed Through Many Revisions. We Have To Learn To Be Intelligent Assessors Of The Data Coming In To Us And What It's Doing To Our Mental Process.
Intelligent
Data
Fiction
Whatever You Love, That Will Be An Influence. It Just Will. So In Effect The Young Writer's Job Is: Go Out And Find Some Stuff To Love.
Jobs
Stuff
Young Writers
The Word 'funny' Is A Bit Like The Word 'love' - We Don't Have Enough Words To Describe The Many Varieties.
Enough
Words Love
Variety
Some Of Buddhist Texts Say That, In The Moment After You Die, You Think Of New Jersey And You Go To New Jersey Or You Think Of 1820 And You Go To 1820. Also, All Your Sort Of Inner-symbology Gets Writ Large. So, If You're A Christian, You See Christian Iconography.
Christian
Buddhist
Thinking
It Would Be So Weird If We Knew Just As Much As We Needed To Know To Answer All The Questions Of The Universe. Wouldn't That Be Freaky? Whereas The Probability Is High That There Is A Vast Reality That We Have No Way To Perceive, That's Actually Bearing Down On Us Now And Influencing Everything.
Reality
Would Be
Answers
To Me, The Process Of Writing Is Just Reading What I've Written And - Like Running Your Hand Over One Of Those Mod Glass Stovetops To Find Where The Heat Is - Looking For Where The Energy Is In The Prose, Then Going In The Direction Of That. It's An Exercise In Being Open To Whatever Is There.
Running
Reading
Writing
I Think Something That I Can't Name About Our Media Has Made Us Move Away From That Kind Of Specificity And That Kind Of Curiosity.
Moving
Thinking
Names
It Really Was Something, To See Ram Bahadur Bomjon, Apparently Living Without Food Or Water. Before I Went On That Trip I'd Asked Advice On It From A Very Wise Person Who I Love And Revere - Basically Trying To See If I Was Somehow Disrespecting Buddhism By Trying To Write About It, And Also Looking For Some Grounding On What Stance To Take ... And My Friend Said, "well, Why Don't You Just Go And See?" And I Hear That In My Head All The Time Now: "why Don't You Go And See?"
Wise
Writing
Buddhism
And So, A Prediction, And My Heartfelt Wish For You: As You Get Older, Your Self Will Diminish And You Will Grow In Love. You Will Gradually Be Replaced By Love. If You Have Kids, That Will Be A Huge Moment In Your Process Of Self-diminishment. You Really Won't Care What Happens To You, As Long As They Benefit. That's One Reason Your Parents Are So Proud And Happy Today. One Of Their Fondest Dreams Has Come True: You Have Accomplished Something Difficult And Tangible That Has Enlarged You As A Person And Will Make Your Life Better, From Here On In, Forever.
Dream
Love You
Kids
Back In 1992, I Had My First Story Accepted By 'the New Yorker.'
Stories
Firsts
Accepted
I Think The Biggest Single Issue Is Income Inequity And What This Is Doing To The Good Old "american Dream." This And Corporatism - This Delusional Idea That "shareholder Value" Outweighs Everything Else.
Dream
Thinking
Ideas
It Really Strikes Me How Much Of Your Energy In America, Especially If You're From A Working Back-ground, Is Spent Just Keeping Your Head Above Water. It Really Saps Your Grace And Your Strength.
America
Water
Grace
I Was, Not An Altar Boy, But A Reader Of The Epistle, And I Walked In On A Nun And A Priest Furiously French Kissing When I Was In Seventh Grade. I Walked In, Saw It, And Went, "no Way," Backed Out, Composed Myself, And Went Back In, And It Was Still Going On. And The Experience Of Seeing That Was Actually Very Deep.
Kissing
Boys
Way
I Tend To Foster Drama Via Bleakness. If I Want The Reader To Feel Sympathy For A Character, I Cleave The Character In Half, On His Birthday. And Then It Starts Raining. And He's Made Of Sugar.
Birthday
Drama
Rain
Why Were We Put Here, So Inclined To Love, When End Of Our Story = Death? That Harsh. That Cruel. Do Not Like.
Life
Stories
Harsh
Night Was Falling. Birds Were Singing. Birds Were, It Occurred To Me To Say, Enacting A Frantic Celebration Of Day's End. They Were Manifesting As The Earth's Bright-colored Nerve Endings, The Sun's Descent Urging Them Into Activity, Filling Them Individually With Life Nectar, The Life Nectar Then Being Passed Into The World, Out Of Each Beak, In The Form Of That Bird's Distinctive Song, Which Was, In Turn, An Accident Of Beak Shape, Throat Shape, Breast Configuration, Brain Chemistry: Some Birds Blessed In Voice, Others Cursed; Some Squeaking, Others Rapturous.
Song
Blessed
Fall
Every Writer Knows That When You're Imitating Somebody - You Know, You're Sounding Like Faulkner - You're Doing Pretty Good, But Your Life In Hoboken Isn't Faulkneresque. So You Get That Kind Of Shortfall Between The Actual Experience Of The Writer And The Things He's Hungry To Express And The Voice Itself.
Kind
Hungry
Some Of Our Writers Are Starting To Incorporate Elements Of Social Media, Etc. In The Work Itself, Which Is All For The Good, I Think - Finding New Ways Of Being Poetic.
Thinking
Media
Elements
I Don't Mind Being Criticized Intelligently; Although I Don't Love It.
Mind
As A Writer I'm Essentially Just Trying To Impersonate A First-time Reader, Who Picks Up The Story And Has To Decide, At Every Point, Whether To Keep Going.
Trying
Stories
Firsts
The Story Sometimes Writes You Into A Corner.
Writing
Stories
Sometimes
I've Had That My Whole Career. People Were Always Hedging Around The Question Of: Why Are You So Dark? What Happened To You?
Dark
Careers
People
More And More These Days What I Find Myself Doing In My Stories Is Making A Representation Of Goodness And A Representation Of Evil And Then Having Those Two Run At Each Other Full-speed, Like A Couple Of Peewee Football Players, To See What Happens. Who Stays Standing? Whose Helmet Goes Flying Off?
Football
Running
Couple
I Have A Sense That God Is Unfair And Preferentially Punishes His Weak, His Dumb, His Fat, His Lazy. I Believe He Takes More Pleasure In His Perfect Creatures, And Cheers Them On Like A Brainless Dad As They Run Roughshod Over The Rest Of Us. He Gives Us A Need For Love, And No Way To Get Any. He Gives Us A Desire To Be Liked, And Personal Attributes That Make Us Utterly Unlikable. Having Placed His Flawed And Needy Children In A World Of Exacting Specifications, He Deducts The Difference Between What We Have And What We Need From Our Hearts And Our Self-esteem And Our Mental Health.
Running
Cheer
Children
Fiction Is Open To Whoever Comes In The Door, As Long As You Come In Energetically.
Doors
Long
Fiction
I Read To Make Myself Feel Awake.
Awake
Feels
Whole Idea Is Really Intriguing To Me. If You Took Snapshots Of Ourselves Throughout The Day, The Way That Our Mind Is Twisting And Turning, Then At The Moment Of Death, The Mind Would Be Twisting And Turning In The Same Way. But The Buddhists Say It's Super-sized Because There's No Bodily Damper On It.
Buddhist
Ideas
Mind
I Love The Idea That More People Would Read Short Fiction. I Think It's Such A Humanizing Form. It Softens The Boundaries Between People.
Thinking
Ideas
People
Now, We Don't Really Believe These Things - Intellectually We Know Better - But We Believe Them Viscerally, And Live By Them, And They Cause Us To Prioritize Our Own Needs Over The Needs Of Others, Even Though What We Really Want, In Our Hearts, Is To Be Less Selfish, More Aware Of What's Actually Happening In The Present Moment, More Open, And More Loving.
Selfish
Believe
Heart
I Think About How I Conceptualize The Audience. The Trick Is That They've Got To Be Smarter And More Worldly Than Me. So As I'm Revising, I'm Keeping That In Mind. I Cannot Condescend, Even A Little Bit. Every Single Choice That I Make Is Motivated By That.
Thinking
Choices
Mind
The Bottom Line For Me Is That Life Is Short And Art Is Long.
Art
Life Is Short
Long
Stay Alert. The Big Moral Crossroads In Your Life May Not Come Labeled As Such.
May
Moral
Crossroads
One Lesson I Learned The Hard Way, Early In My Career, Was That If I Tried To Write To Be Smart Or To Convey A Theme Or From Some Existing Plan, The Result Was Usually Pretty Boring. My Intuitive Move, Whenever I'm Considering Writing Something, Is To Steer Towards What Feels Enjoyable. Another Way Of Saying It Is, You Just Try To Avoid The "sucky." If You Start To Think Of A Story And A Way To Tell It, And Your Reaction Is Kind Of Like, Ugh, That's Going To Be Hard, Then You Don't Want To Do That.
Smart
Moving
Writing
I Think It Was A Big Revelation To Me Earlier In My Life That People Who Appear To Be Evil Are Actually Not. In Other Words, Nobody Wakes Up In The Morning And Says, "yuck, Yuck, Yuck, I'm Gonna Be Evil."
Morning
Thinking
People
I Guess: People Who Are Comfortable Enough With Reality To Allow Other Sorts Of Realities And Other Mindsets To Just Be, And Then To Regard These With Real Interest And Joy [and The Joy Appears In The Prose Quality Itself].
Real
People
Joy
So I May Not Have Had A Gothic Childhood, But Childhood Makes Its Own Gothicity.
Childhood
May
Gothic
I Don't Know About Transformation. But Scientifically You Can Say: Well, It Doesn't Seem To Hurt Anybody. Personally I've Been Cheered By Books At Really Critical Moments. That Much I Believe.
Hurt
Believe
Book
When Somebody You've Known For 20 Years, And With Whom You Have A Full Context, Winks At You Or Whatever, It Can Be Huge. I Think In A Sense What You're Trying To Re-create In Fiction Is That.
Thinking
Years
Trying
I'm Comfortable With Anything After The Fact.
Facts
Comfortable
When Something Really Bad Is Going On In A Culture, The Average Guy Doesn't See It. He Can't. He's Average And Is Surrounded By And Immersed In The Cant And Discourse Of The Status Quo.
Average
Guy
Culture
Vonnegut's War Was Necessary. And Yet It Was Massacre And Screaming And Confusion And Blood And Death. It Was The Mammoth Projection Outward Of The Confused Inner Life Of Men. In War, The Sad Tidy Constructs We Make To Help Us Believe Life Is Orderly And Controllable Are Roughly Thrown Aside Like The Delusions They Are. In War, Love Is Outed As An Insane, Insupportable Emotion, A Kind Of Luxury Emotion, Because Everywhere You Look, Someone Beloved To Someone Is Being Slaughtered, By Someone Whose Own Beloved Has Been Slaughtered, Or Will Be, Or Could Be.
Confused
War
Believe
One Of The Things I Noticed About The Trump Supporters Was A Lot Of Projected Fear. I Can't Tell You How Many Times A Conversation Went Like This: "we've Got To Stop These Immigrants, Because It's Terrible." I'd Say, "okay, What Personally Have You Observed About This?" And There Would Be Basically Nothing In That Box. And I'd Say, "where'd You Get Your Information?" Thinking They Were Going To Say Fox. But They Would Always Say, "well, I Get My Information From All Kinds Of Sources." Fox Is Kind Of Center-left To A Lot Of People Now.
Thinking
People
Information
I Think It Is Time For A New Pride In The Intellectual Life, And A New Impatience With People Who Take Pride In Ignorance, Or Somehow Use "elite" To Mean "person Who Has Taken The Time To Know" And Then Are Eager To Dismiss, Say, Striving, Or The Notion That Improving One's Self Out Of Difficult Conditions Is A Noble Thing.
Taken
Ignorance
Mean
As A Kid, I Had A Real Fascination With Perverse, Off-color, And Kind Of Risky Things, And I Also Had A Very Sanctimonious Catholic, Purist Side.
Real
Kids
Color
Success Is Like A Mountain In Front Of You That Keeps Growing. If You're Not Careful, It Will Take Up Your Whole Life.
Mountain
Growing
Whole Life
What Was Fun For Me With This Book [lincoln In The Bardo] Was To Start Out With The Principle That Went, "we're Going To Fight Every Day To Make This Not A Novel; Make It Too Short To Be A Novel." And Then With That Principle In Place, The Book Sort Of Starts To Say, "okay, But I Really Need This. I Really Need Some Historical Nuggets." And You're Like, "all Right, But Keep It Under Control."
Fun
Book
Fighting
Our First Responsibility In All Things Is To Preserve Our Goodness Of Heart - Then And Only Then Act.
Responsibility
Heart
Firsts
[reading Swing Time] Made Me A Feel A Little Bit Like When I Used To Read David [foster] Wallace. Like, "i Can't Play That Game. I Wish I Could, But I Can't Do It."
Reading
Swings
Games
It's A Big World, And I Really Like It.
World
Mecca
Bigs
Stories, As Much As We Like To Talk About Them, Retrospectively, As Emanations Of Theme Or Worldview Or Intention, Occur Primarily As Technical Objects When They're Being Written. Or At Least They Do For Me. They're The Result Of Thousands Of Decisions Made At Speed During Revision.
Decision
Stories
Revision
I Think It's Basically The Same Game, Although With A Public Figure Like [donald] Trump I Think You Are Bound To Consider The Public Persona Rather Than The Private One. At Least That Was The Case With That Piece Of Writing.
Writing
Thinking
Games
[lincoln In The Bardo] Is Not A Long Book. And That Meant I Could Obsess Over It And Live In It Both Backwards And Forwards And Hyper-control Everything.
Book
Long
Hyper
My Understanding Of Kindness Is That We Are Hoping To Be Truly Beneficial In Every Situation, And That This Desire Means A Whole Suite Of Things: Being Nicer, Sure, But Also Being More Aware, More Present, More Articulate, More Fearless, Less Habituated, Etc., Etc. And Sometimes Even Being Firm, Or Having An Edge, Or Even Being Angry.
Kindness
Mean
Understanding
I Actually Do Believe In Life After Death.
Believe
Life After Death
After Death
I Have This Tendency To Take A Little Bit Of Questionable Knowledge And Riff On It.
Littles
Tendencies
Questionable
I've Been Reading About And Writing About The Civil War Period And It Is So Striking That Slavery Was Never Made Right - [abraham] Lincoln Was Killed, Reconstruction Came Along, And All Of That Inequity Was Frozen In Place And Carried Forward Rather Smugly. So I Think The Burden Is Now Upon Us White People, To Say That This Systemic Inequality Offends Us.
War
Reading
Writing
I'm Always Nice When I Do Drugs. But, You Know, I'm Nicer On The Drug Called "writing."
Nice
Writing
Drug
I Understand What Something Short Should Be Like. I Understand Beauty In That Form. If I Start Extending, Somehow I Kind Of Lose My Bearings.
Kind
Form
Should
What Evil Does First In The World, Maybe, Is Distract Us From Our Pursuit Of Goodness.
Evil
Firsts
Doe
What America Is, To Me, Is A Guy Doesn't Want To Buy, You Let Him Not Buy, You Respect His Not Buying. A Guy Has A Crazy Notion Different From Your Crazy Notion, You Pat Him On The Back And Say, Hey Pal, Nice Crazy Notion, Let's Go Have A Beer. America, To Me, Should Be Shouting All The Time, A Bunch Of Shouting Voices, Most Of Them Wrong, Some Of Them Nuts, But Please, Not Just One Droning Glamorous Reasonable Voice.
Crazy
Nice
Beer
I Know This Will Sound Naïve, But I Often Wonder What America Would Be Like If Our National Ethos Was Simply To Minimize Suffering. Period. To Try, Every Day, To Convert Our Wonderful Wealth And National Energy Into The Cessation Of Suffering Wherever We Find It. Imagine If That Was Our National Mindset. Well, We Can-we Must-dream.
Dream
Ethos
America
I Have Finally Realized That, You Know, It's Not A Given That My Lifespan Will Accommodate My Writing Aspirations.
Writing
Given
Aspiration
I'm Not A Natural Criticizer - I Prefer To Like And Praise And So On.
Praise
Natural
It's A Little Like Packing For A Trip. First You Lay Out Everything That Might Possibly Be Useful, With No Thought About The Size Of Your Suitcase. Then, Look At Your Suitcase. In The Case Of Narrative, There's A Certain Obligation To Keep The Pace Up And Have Each Section Or Subsection Be Doing Something.
Size
Looks
Pace
I Might Take From The Current Political Chaos A Desire To Somehow Reflect Its Essential Qualities In A Story - The Blatant Lies That Get Accepted With Repetition; The Way Mass Media Seems To Be Agitating People En Masse; The Way, Particularly, That A Relatively Lucky And Affluent And Privileged Population Can Be Undone By A Certain Spoiled Quality; That Feeling When Two Decent People Violently Disagree, Because They Are Arguing From Two Non-intersecting Data Sets - Well, The List Goes On.
Lying
Media
Data
At Times, They're So Right And I'm So Left, We Agree.
Agree
Left
When You Do Something That's Going To Speak To People, It's Going To Be Because You're Really Allowing All Of Yourself To The Table In An Accepting Way.
People
Tables
Way
I Actually Believe That A Lot Of What People Call Originality Has To Do With Persistence In The Craft.
Believe
Persistence
People
I Watched A Documentary About The Immigrant Crisis Around The World. And It Does Make Me Blush At All The Times I've Stood Up On The Stage And Given Your Speech About The Healing Power Of Fiction.
Healing
Speech
Documentaries
I Think The Path For A Young Writer Might Be One That Says, "i Have To Accept Myself, This Is What I Am. I Can't Eradicate My Defects. I Can Work On Them."
Thinking
Might
Path
The Cool Parts - The Parts That Have Won Dubai Its Reputation As 'the Vegas Of The Middle East' Or 'the Venice Of The Middle East' Or 'the Disney World Of The Middle East, If Disney World Were The Size Of San Francisco And Out In A Desert' - Have Been Built In The Last Ten Years.
Dubai
Years
San Francisco
I Would Say One Thing Writing This Book [lincoln In The Bardo] Did For Me Was Underscore The Fact That This Issue [all Men Are Created Equal] Has Never Been Properly Addressed And It Hasn't Gone Away.
Book
Writing
Men
We've Got A Real Problem With Social Media That We Didn't Know We Were Going To Have. It's Almost Like The Demons Have Gotten Out Of The Box.
Real
Media
Problem
When I Think About What Fiction Does Morally, I'm Happier Thinking Of A Person Full Of Multiplicities - Sort Of Fragmented.
Thinking
Doe
Fiction
I Came To Writing Kind Of Late. I Was An Engineer, And The One Thing I've Learned Is That You Have To Steer A Project In The Direction Of The Maximum Fun For You. You Could Say Lively Energy, Or You Have To Try To Be Intrigued. Basically, If You Were A Musician And You Were Playing Joylessly, Nobody Would Want To Hear You.
Fun
Writing
Trying
What Good The Prophet In The Wilderness May Do Is Incremental And Personal. It's Good For Us To Hear Someone Speak The Irrational Truth. It's Good For Us When, In Spite Of All Of The Sober, Pragmatic, And Even Correct Arguments That War Is Sometimes Necessary Someone Says: War Is Large-scale Murder, Us At Our Worst, The Stupidest Guy Doing The Cruelest Thing To The Weakest Being.
War
Guy
Slaughterhouse Five
There's This De Facto Assumption That For Something To Have Value, It Has To Be Economically Self-supporting - Which Imposes A Very Low Ceiling On A Culture.
Self
Ceilings
Culture
Life Is Short, Very Short, And What Are We Doing Here If Not Trying To Become More Generous And Loving?
Life Is Short
Trying
Ifs
Don't Be Afraid To Be Confused. Try To Remain Permanently Confused. Anything Is Possible. Stay Open, Forever, So Open It Hurts, And Then Open Up Some More, Until The Day You Die, World Without End, Amen.
Life
Hurt
Confused
America, To Me, Should Be Shouting All The Time, A Bunch Of Shouting Voices, Most Of Them Wrong, Some Of Them Nuts, But Please, Not Just One Droning Glamourous Reasonable Voice.
Nuts
Voice
America
He Was A Father. That's What A Father Does.eases The Burdens Of Those He Loves. Saves The Ones He Loves From Painful Last Images That Might Endure For A Lifetime.
Fathers Day
Dad
Ease
On One Level, I Am A Total Softie, Sort Of Depressed And Afraid Of Losing The People I Love Or Failing Them. To Disguise That, There's All This Harsh, Poop-centric, External Swagger, Full Of Nastiness. I'm A Cloaking Device.
People
Swagger
Levels
I Think Each Writer Has To Seek Her Most Energetic Prose Style. She Has To Find A Way To Write So That Nobody Can Deny It.
Writing
Thinking
Style
The Old And Honorable American Notion, That A Person Who Works Hard Should Be Able To Live In Freedom And Security, With Dignity - Seems To Have Taken On A Secondary Status.
Taken
Hard Work
Able
Writing A Story I Am Just Trying To Find Some Little Interesting Thing To Start Out With: Something Small, Even Trivial. Preferably Something That Doesn't Have A Lot Of Thematic Or Political Baggage - A Little Crumb That Is Interesting.
Writing
Interesting
Political
It Was Like Either: (a) I Was A Terrible Guy Who Was Knowingly Doing This Rotten Thing Over And Over, Or (b) It Wasn’t So Rotten, Really, Just Normal, And The Way To Confirm It Was Normal Was To Keep Doing It, Over And Over.
Guy
Rotten
Way
On A More Technical Level, A Story Takes A Lot Of Words. And To Generate Words And Phrases And Images And So On, That Will Compel The Reader To Continue Reading - That Stand A Chance Of Really Grabbing A Reader - The Writer Has To Work Out Of A Place Of, Let's Say, Familiarity And Affection. The Matrix Of The Story Has To Be Made Out Of Stuff The Writer Really Knows About And Likes. The Writer Can't Be Stretching And (purely) Inventing All The Time. Well, I Can't, Anyway.
Reading
Work Out
Phrases
The Internet Kind Of Feels Like Happiness Sometimes, However. It Feels Like Stimulation.
Kind
Sometimes
Internet
A Culture's Ability To Understand The World And Itself Is Critical To Its Survival. But Today We Are Led Into The Arena Of Public Debate By Seers Whose Main Gift Is Their Ability To Compel People To Continue To Watch Them.
People
Survival
Watches
With Fiction, And Also With Nonfiction That You Can Take Your Time Doing, You Have A Much Better Chance Of Reaching Across The Divide And Connecting With Somebody Who Is Opposed To You On Some Things. They're Opposed To You On One Axis, Which Is Politics, But If You Go Over The Axis Called Puppies, You Might Find Some Common Ground.
Axes
Doing You
Fiction
I Say Yes To The Hot Bath And The Sandwich - To Getting Ourselves Into The Best Possible Mental Shape To Identify And Then Fight The Necessary Fights From The Best Possible Mind-state: Calm, Loving, Affectionate, Precise. Not Pushovers But Also Not Zealots. With The Idea In Mind That "our Enemies" Are Not Our Enemies; They Might Seem Like That In Their Present Form But That Form Can Morph. We Really Are Large, And Really Do Contain Multitudes. But I Think It All Has To Start With A Kindly Presence Of Mind, And The Aspiration To Affection For Others.
Fighting
Thinking
Presence Of Mind
I Try To Keep My Artistic Opinions Not So Much "to Myself" But "on Myself."
Trying
Opinion
Artistic
I Don't Feel Like I Have The Intelligence To Really Inhabit A Consistently High Level Of Prose.
Levels
Feels
Prose
"kindness" Can Mean A Lot Of Different Things. In This Case, I Felt I Had To Present His [donald Trump's] Supporters In As Fair A Light As Possible - Many Of Them Hadn't Been Interviewed Before And That Entailed Some Interviewer-courtesy In The Editing And So On.
Kindness
Mean
Light
...there Is No End To The Making And Selling Of Things There Is No End To The Making And Selling Of Things There Is No End... Man, It Occurs To Me, Is A Joyful, Buying-and-selling Piece Of Work. I Have Been Wrong, Dead Wrong, When I've Decried Consumerism. Consumerism Is What We Are. It Is, In A Sense, A Holy Impulse. A Human Being Is Someone Who Joyfully Goes In Pursuit Of Things, Brings Them Home, Then Immediately Starts Planning How To Get More.
Home
Men
Pieces
The Best Thing We Can Bring To Any Fight Is A Calm And Compassionate Mind.
Fighting
Mind
Calm
I Watched A Bunch Of Kids Movies On Christmas. I Was Kind Of Joking With Our Family By Asking, "is Anyone Allowed To Die In A Kid's Movie Anymore?"
Kids
Asking
Kind
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.
Creative
Shadow
Sound
One Of The Ideas That Runs Through This Book [lincoln In The Bardo] Is This Buddhist Notion That The Mind Is Incredibly Powerful; Not The Brain But The Mind.
Running
Buddhist
Powerful
I Attended Catholic School. We Received A Great Education From The Nuns. ... Also, Guilt. Guilt And A Feeling Of Never Being Satisfied With What You've Done. And A Sense That You Are Inadequate And A Big Phony. All Useful For A Writer. I'm Always Being Edited By My Inner Nun.
School
Catholic
Feelings
Monologues, In Some Ways, Are The Most Scientific Descriptions Of Consciousness And Even Of Gatherings.
Gathering
Way
Consciousness
This Whole Literary Game Of Trying To Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your Opponent Is Good For Everybody. It Leaves You More Open-hearted, It Gives You A More Accurate Vision Of The Other Person, Because It's More Based On Curiosity Than Projection. In The End If You Do Have To Fight, You're Better Equipped To Fight. Also It Doesn't Leave You Damaged At The End, It Doesn't Leave You Hateful Or Malformed By Your Own Anger.
Fighting
Games
Shoes
In The Moment Of Reading, The Writer Comes Up To The Surface And The Reader Comes Up To The Surface And They Kiss, Like Two Fish. That Actually Does Happen.
Reading
Kissing
Two
Both [donald] Trump And Bernie [sanders] Got To This Idea Of The Vanishing Middle Class Sooner And With More Passion Than More Mainstream Politicians, And Benefited From It. The Difference, Of Course, Is That Bernie Understood This In A More Compassionate Framework, And Talked About It In Conjunction With A Revitalization Of Another Part Of The American Project, Which Is The Notion That We Are All Created Equal, And That Our Laws And Culture And Action Ought To Reflect That.
Passion
Law
Class
The Idea Is That What An Artist Lives Through Should Broaden His Notion Of What It Is Possible For A Human Being To Live Through, And That New Understanding Should Then Get Into And Expand The Work.
Artist
Ideas
Understanding
A Sort Of Fearlessness - The Notion That A Person Could Be Comfortable With (even Interested In) Whatever Arises. I Sure Can't Do It, But I Think All Of Us Have Had Little Glimpse Of That Power, Often When We Are Really Actively Loving Someone Or Something And Feel That Little Eradication Of Self That Happens When We Are Engaged In Feeling Protective Or Especially Fond Of Someone Else. I Associate That Feeling With A Corresponding Clarity Of Purpose And A Disappearance Of Confusion.
Thinking
Self
Clarity Of Purpose
Reading Is A Form Of Prayer, A Guided Meditation That Briefly Makes Us Believe We're Someone Else, Disrupting The Delusion That We're Permanent And At The Center Of The Universe. Suddenly (we're Saved!) Other People Are Real Again, And We're Fond Of Them.
Prayer
Real
Reading
There's A Really Nice Moment In The Life Of A Piece Of Writing Where The Writer Starts To Get A Feeling Of It Outgrowing Him - Or He Starts To See It Having A Life Of Its Own That Doesn't Have Anything To Do With His Ego Or His Desire To 'be A Good Writer'.
Nice
Writing
Feelings
Monologue Is The Most Honest Way To Represent Human Beings.
Way
Honest
Monologues
The One Thing About A Christmas Carol That Always Bothers Me Is That Cratchit Is So Sweet And Perfect. He's Like An Ivy League Kid Who Just Is Labeled "poor." He Doesn't Have Any Bad Habits. He's Never Cranky With His Kids.
Sweet
Kids
Ivy
I'm Not Thinking In Any Big Thematic Or Conceptual Terms - Especially In This Book [lincoln In The Bardo] When I Was Trying To Make The Voices More Active, More Energetic.
Book
Thinking
Voice
When You Write An Essay, Of Course You're Going To Get Pushback, But You're Going To Be Allowed To Make Your Case At Leisure. You're Going To Be Allowed To Take Into Account Possible Objections And To Fully Humanize Your Reader. That Feels To Me Like A Much More Sane Thing To Do.
Writing
Leisure
Cases
I'm A Liberal And I'm Left Of Gandhi And I Don't Like Trump.
Trump
Left
Do Not Really Like Rich People, As They Make Us Poor People Feel Dopey And Inadequate. Not That We Are Poor. I Would Say We Are Middle. We Are Very, Very Lucky. I Know That. But Still, It Is Not Right That Rich People Make Us Middle People Feel Dopey And Inadequate.
People
Lucky
Rich
I Wasted A Lot Of Years Working On My Writing And Very Grandly Saying, 'and Now... My Novel!,' Which Would Soon Be Reduced To A Short Story, Then To A Paragraph.
Writing
Years
Stories
I've Also Found That Trying To Be Active With Social Media Changes My Moment-to-moment Perceptions. Instead Of Feeling, "what's The Deepest Version Of What's Happening Here?" I Start To Feel, "how Can I Use [or "claim"] This?".
Media
Feelings
Perception
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.
Art
Real
Wonder
My Habit Would Have Been To Veer Towards The Dark - To Prove I Was Something; Edgy, Or Maybe To Prove That I Was Cognisant Of The Dark Side. Now, With Age And Confidence, I Can Say, Yeah, That's True, But I Am Cognisant Of The Fact That People Can Do Things Well. And Can Be More Loving Than You Expect.
Dark
People
Age
This May Be The One Clear Truth Of The So-called Border Issue: Put A Poor Country Next To A Rich One And Watch Which Way The Traffic Flows. Add Impediments, The Traffic Endeavors To Flow Around Them. Eilimate Disparity. The Traffic Stops.
Country
Issues
Borders
As Flannery O'connor Says, A Person Can Choose What She Writes But She Can't Choose What She Makes Live. Some People Are Really Acoustic Writers And So For Them The Secret Revision Is Sound. Other People May Revise In Terms Of The Way A Paragraph Feels. There's A Million Ways To Do It.
Writing
People
Secret
You Can Say You're A Liberal And Everybody Laughs And It's A Good Time.
Laughing
Good Times
All Along, My Mantra Was: Don't Write Unless It Contributes To The Emotion, And Do Anything You Do In Service Of The Emotion Only.
Writing
Emotion
One Of The Ways That We Cope With Anxiety Is By Over Planning And Over Controlling. If We Know Where It's Going To, We Can Just Relax And Do It. Unfortunately, In My Experience, That's Not The Way It Works. The Story Doesn't Want To Be Told What To Do. You Have To Enter Into This Process With A High Level Of Trust That The Many Hours Of Choosing That You're Doing Every Day Will Gradually Clarify The Narrative For You. And That's What Happens.
Anxiety
Relax
Stories
We All Think We Know What Happens After Death. But Maybe It's Going To Be Not Only Weird But Also Dorky And Comic And Inconsistent.
Thinking
Comic
After Death
Even If Something Within Me Is Ugly, Writing Is A Pretty Good Place To Play With That Thing And To Begin To Really See It.
Writing
Play
Ugly
Whatever Your Supposed Politics Are - Left, Right - If You Put It In A Human Connection, Most People Will Rise To The Occasion And Feel The Human Pain In A Way That They Might Not If It Was Presented In A More Conceptual Way.
Pain
People
Connections
I Don't Really Write Beautifully Naturally, Unlike Some People.
Writing
People
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.
Art
Intelligent
Games
The Only Thing I Might Have Noticed [and This Is Pretty Anecdotal] Is That There Is Some Tendency To Need To Be Taught That 'writing Is Rewriting' - Maybe More Of A Sense Than Was Pervasive 10 Years Ago That The First Or Second Pass Of A Story Is Sufficient. That Is An Idea That Is Easily Dislodged, But I Suspect It Might Have Something To Do With The Turnaround Time Re: Blogging And So On - This Sense That There Is Some Essential Truth About A First Draft That One Runs The Risk Of "ruining" By Coming Back To It.
Running
Writing
Years
I Love Story-writing Because I Can (more Or Less, On Occasion) Actually Do It. That's Really The Truth. I Like The Idea That A Story Is Sort Of A Site For Making Cool Language Effects - A Site For Celebrating Language, And, Therefore, The World. And The Brevity Is Part Of The Challenge. I Like Stories Because I Get Them - I Know How To Make Beauty, Or Something Like Beauty, In That Mode.
Writing
Ideas
Challenges
If I Find Myself Being Too Earnest And Sentimental And Hyperbolic And Simplistic, Which Is Definitely A Tendency I Have, Then I Bring In This Perverse Henchman.
Sentimental
Henchmen
Tendencies
Do All The Other Things, The Ambitious Things - Travel, Get Rich, Get Famous, Innovate, Lead, Fall In Love, Make And Lose Fortunes...but As You Do, To The Extent That You Can, Err In The Direction Of Kindness.
Graduation
Falling In Love
Kindness
I See This Quality [real Interest And Joy] In The Work Of [pavel] Chekhov, Of Course, And [alexei] Tolstoy And Really Just About Any Great Writer.
Real
Joy
Quality
My Artistic Approach Is That You're Supposed To Be A Little Baffled.
Artistic
The Universal Human Laws - Need, Love For The Beloved, Fear, Hunger, Periodic Exaltation, The Kindness That Rises Up Naturally In The Absence Of Hunger/fear/pain - Are Constant, Predictable, Reliable, Universal, And Are Merely Ornamented With The Details Of Local Culture.
Pain
Kindness
Law
Social Media Sometimes Feels Like A Vehicle For One-dimensional Sniping, More Than True Criticism.
Media
Criticism
Sniping
I've Noticed That Nowadays I'm Doing A Lot Of Stuff On The Phone And On The Computer, Which I Usually Wouldn't Do Earlier. And I Can Feel My Brain Being Rewired: I'm Getting Anxious, I'm Getting More Manic. Now, I'm An Extreme Case Because I'm Old And I'm Overdoing It. But Still, It's Really Interesting That I Can Actually Feel A Change In My Neurochemistry From This Interaction With The Technology.
Technology
Phones
Interesting
My Stories, I Can Understand Them As A Little Toy That You Wind Up And You Put It On The Floor And It Just Goes Under The Coach. That I Get. Beyond That, I'm A Little Lost.
Wind
Stories
Littles
You Can See A Whole Book As A Series Of Creating An Expectation And Then Delivering A Skew On That Expectation So It's Not Totally Satisfied.
Book
Creating
Expectations
Your First Responsibility Is To Yourself And To Your Own Goodness Of Heart.
Heart
Responsibility
Firsts
I Think When You See [donald] Trump In Person, My Reaction Is You Kind Of Enjoy It. It's Kind Of An Enjoyable Night Out.
Night
Thinking
Kind
I Remember Reading The Bluest Eye When I Was A Young Parent, And Something Opened In Me. That's The Highest Aspiration.
Reading
Eye
Young Parents
It Seems To Me That There Are Certain Thoughts And Vignettes And Attitudes That I Have Always Had The Desire To Represent.
Attitude
Desire
Vignettes
It Blew My Mind, Reading Swing Time, That I Could Take Any Sentence In The Book, And It Was One Of The Most Beautiful Sentences Written In English.
Beautiful
Reading
Book
Compassion Doesn't Have To Be Weak Or Enabling; It Can Also Be Quite Bold.
Compassion
Enabling
Weak
In My Case, When I Am Trying To Be "kind" I Often Default In A Sort Of Toothless Loving-all Stance That Is, Actually, Not Kind, Because It Is Not Truthful.
Trying
Be Kind
Truthful
I've Always Wanted To Write Energetic, Atypical Sentences, I.e., Sentences That Were Not Normal Or Bland.
Writing
Normal
Energetic
So Here's Something I Know To Be True, Although It's A Little Corny, And I Don't Quite Know What To Do With It.
Advice
Littles
Corny
According To Me, Your Life Is Going To Be A Gradual Process Of Becoming Kinder And More Loving. Hurry Up. Speed It Along. Start Right Now.
Graduation
Becoming
Life Is
Chekhov - Shall I Be Blunt? - Is The Greatest Short Story Writer Who Ever Lived.
Story Writers
Stories
Chekhov
An Artist's Job Is To Be Interested In Things As They Are.
Jobs
Artist
I Came Away Believing And Really Deeply Troubled By Is The Extent To Which You Can Have Two Well-intentioned People Talking In A Friendly Spirit And You Get To A Point Where The Two Mutual Mythologies Just Don't Intersect. So Kind Of The Next Piece I'd Like To Write Or Think About Is How Did This Left-right Divide Get So Weird And Codified.
Believe
Writing
Thinking
Anyone Can Be Shamed, But Feeling Guilt Requires Empathy Within.
Empathy
Feelings
Guilt
A Person Supporting [donald]trump Likes Trump. And I Think They Would Say The Same About Me.
Thinking
Likes
Trump
Ralph Kramden, As Played By Jackie Gleason, Was This Big Bumbling New York City Bus Driver Who Was Kind Of Mean And Crass And A Little Bit Egotistical. But Underneath It All, He Was A Big Heart Looking For A Place To Land I Think.
New York
Mean
Heart
What I Regret Most In My Life Are Failures Of Kindness.
Kindness
Regret
Advice
Toni Morrison Seems To Have A Lot Of Faith In People - That's What I Mean By Gentle Power.
Mean
People
Gentle
What I'm Primarily Saying,' He Says, 'is That This Is A Time For Knowledge Assimilation, Not Backstabbing. We Learned A Lesson, You And I. We Personally Grew. Gratitude For This Growth Is An Appropriate Response. Gratitude, And Being Careful Never To Make The Same Mistake Twice.
Gratitude
Mistake
Growth
I Find That The Great Artists I've Met Are People Who Are So Playfully Invested In Their Process That, Even If It Doesn't Come Out The Way They Like, They Still Power Through And Even Take Energy From It.
Artist
People
Energy
The Switch That I'd Like To Throw On Is The One That Says, "look, You're A Human Being Whose Mind Is Every Bit As Active As Anybody Else's. Your Experiences Are Just As Real." For That Matter, Even If They're Even If They're Crazy, They're Valid. They Occurred In This World So They're Valid Topics For Literature.
Crazy
Real
Mind
I'm A Control Freak. I'm Defensive. And I'm An Egomaniac. That's True About Me.
Egomaniacs
Freak
Control Freak
That Seems To Be The Definition Of 'novel' For Me: A Story That Hasn't Yet Discovered A Way To Be Brief.
Stories
Definitions
Way
Suddenly Absurdism Wasn’t An Intellectual Abstraction, It Was Actually Realism. You Could See The Way That Wealth Was Begetting Wealth, Wealth Was Begetting Comfort — And That The Cumulative Effect Of An Absence Of Wealth Was The Erosion Of Grace.
Erosion
Grace
Intellectual
Certainly We're Always Rooting For Our Particular Contingent Moment To Be A Great One. Pain-free. But The More Expansive Vision Has To Include The Idea That, Even For Us, Sometimes Our Particular Contingent Moment Is Going To Be Horrific.
Pain
Ideas
Vision
Just Through The Process Of Trying To Make The Living And The Dead Feel Real, All These Little Benefits Came Out. And These Benefits Turned Out To Be Much More Articulate Statements Of What I Really Believe. And Somehow They Were More Convincing Because They Were Arrived At At Such Length.
Real
Believe
Trying
What's Really Baffling To Me Is The Way That The Technology Has Risen Up To Help Us Become More Materialistic.
Technology
Way
Helping
I Guess What I'm Trying To Say Is That Whatever Weirdness Was Going To Be In There, I Felt, Had To Be Earned. And It Had To Be Required By The Emotional Needs Of The Book.
Book
Emotional
Trying
The Chances Of A Person Breaking Through Their Own Habits And Sloth And Limited Mind To Actually Write Something That Gets Out There And Matters To People Are Slim.
Writing
People
Sloth
The Mind Is A Machine That Is Constantly Asking: What Would I Prefer? Close Your Eyes, Refuse To Move, And Watch What Your Mind Does. What It Does Is Become Discontent With That-which-is. A Desire Arises, You Satisfy That Desire, And Another Arises In Its Place.
Moving
Eye
Mind
I'm Turning 58, And You Get That Kind Of Weird, Old-guy Feeling Of You Don't Have An Infinite Number Of Years Left And If There's Anything You Want To Say Or Represent, It's Time To Try It.
Years
Numbers
Guy
I Think Even Like Saddam Hussein Or Hitler Would Wake Up And Say, "i Think It's Going To Be A Good Day. I'm Gonna Do Some Really Important Work." And Given Their Definition Of Good, They Went Out And Did Horrible Things.
Good Day
Thinking
Important
If I'm Writing A Story And You're Reading It, Or Vice Versa, You Took Time Out Of Your Day To Pick Up My Book. I Think The One Thing That Will Kill That Relationship Is If You Feel Me Condescending To You In The Process.
Book
Reading
Writing
If You Haven't Read You Don't Have The Voice. The Lack Of Voice Eliminates Experience.
Voice
Havens
Ifs
My Theory For Nonfiction Is That Nobody Can Be Free Of Some Kind Of Conceptions About Whatever Story They're Writing. But If You Can Find A Way To Build Those Into The Story, Then The Story Becomes A Process Of Deconstructing And Heightening And Sometimes Changing Those Notions And That Makes Dramatic Tension. The Initial Statement Of Your Position, And Then Letting Reality Act On You To Change It, Is Pretty Good Storytelling.
Writing
Reality
Stories
I Had An Experience A Few Years Ago Where I Was On A Plane In Which One Of The Engines Went Out. I Couldn't Even Remember My Name. I Was Just Repeating The Word No Over And Over.
Years
Names
Remember
For Me, When I'm Coming Up To A Place Where I Have To Make Somebody Up, It's Almost Like Driving And Taking Your Hands Off The Wheel.
Hands
Wheels
Driving
I'm Such A Baby If I Even Get A Flu.
Baby
Flu
Ifs
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.
Art
Real
Writing
While I'm Doing [writing], I Don't Feel It.i Don't Think That's A Failing. I Think It's Just A Feature. Like, A Feature Of Oneself.
Writing
Thinking
Failing
I'm Starting To Withdraw From [technology] As Much As I Can. I Don't Do Much Of The Social Media Stuff. Like, If I'm On Facebook, It Changes My Relation To The Real World In A Way That Makes Me Feel Sick - Almost Like I've Had Too Much Sugar Or Something.
Real
Technology
Media
I Heard Zen Teacher One Time Talking About Abortion, And He Was Saying The Way That Abortion Makes Bad Karma Is Any Time The Person Involved Pretends That There's Not A Cost To The Choice, One Way Or The Other; Whether You Get It Or Don't Get It, There's A Cost. That's Just Basic Responsibility, To Admit That There's A Cost. And The Bad Karma Is When You Pretend That The Thing Is Free.
Karma
Teacher
Responsibility
Trending Author
Eric Church
Lynda Barry
James Caan
Steven Pressfield
Larry Page
Robert Reich
Category
Information