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076eccd
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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 ..
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George Saunders |
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10a09d2
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I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don't you think?
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life
love
parenthood
parenting
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George Saunders |
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3405d97
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And there was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Some..
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George Saunders |
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8335022
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He was like the bed at a party on which they pile the coats.
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George Saunders |
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c5243d7
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Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?
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George Saunders |
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0abec75
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Which maybe that's what love was: liking someone how he was and doing things to help him get even better.
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George Saunders |
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b1b456b
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If/when I die, do not want Pam lonely. Want her to remarry, have full life. As long as new husband is nice guy. Gentle guy. Religious guy. Very caring + good to kids. But kids not fooled. Kids prefer dead dad (i.e., me) to religious guy. Pale, boring, religious guy, with no oomph, who wears weird sweaters and is always a little sad, due to, cannot get boner, due to physical ailment. Ha ha. Death very much on my mind tonight, future read..
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death
life
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George Saunders |
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b6b7c72
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She's sweet but too apocalyptic. You try kissing someone good-night who's just told you for the umpteenth time that the world's experiencing its last disgusting paroxysm before Rapture.
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George Saunders |
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7e81646
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Or to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It's a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I'd say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.
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George Saunders |
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5719925
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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 ..
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George Saunders |
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d4e431e
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One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerisms of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the tiny hand in yours--and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occur..
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death
grief
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George Saunders |
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670cfd4
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At times, they're so Right and I'm so Left, we agree.
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George Saunders |
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0fad612
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And that, against this: the king-types who would snatch the apple from your hand and claim to have grown it, even though what they had, had come to them intact, or been gained unfairly (the nature of that unfairness perhaps being just that they had been born stronger, more clever, more energetic than others), and who, having seized the apple, would eat it so proudly, they seemed to think that not only had they grown it, but had invented the..
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George Saunders |
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927e034
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and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever--
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affection
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George Saunders |
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fb32658
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If you want your Storys to end happy, try being niser.
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George Saunders |
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70f3e46
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He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.
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death
grief
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George Saunders |
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4b5ef5f
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Oh, the pathos of it! - haggard, drawn into fixed lines of unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. The impression I carried away was that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as the saddest man in the world.
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George Saunders |
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7aefba7
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We consider speech to be the result of thought (we have a thought, then select a sentence with which to express it), but thought also results from speech (as we grope, in words, toward meaning, we discover what we think).
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George Saunders |
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00b158e
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Some blows fall too heavy upon those too fragile.
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fragile
fragility
heavy
pain
weakness
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George Saunders |
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d726131
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if we define Megaphone as it's clear that a significant and ascendant component of that voice has become bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, ranting, and agenda-driven. It strives to antagonize us, make us feel anxious, ineffective, and alone; convince us that the world is full of enemies and of people stupider and less agreeable than ourselves; is dedicated to the idea that, outside the sphere of our immediate experience, the world works..
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George Saunders |
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4389329
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A hip-looking teen watches an elderly woman hobble across the street on a walker. "Grammy's here!" he shouts. He puts some MacAttack Mac&Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won't be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook. A truck comes around the corner and hits Grammy, sending her flying over the roof into the backyard, where luckily she lands on a trampoline. Unluckily, she bounc..
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page-156
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George Saunders |
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1215b99
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Good God, but life could be less than easy, not that he was unaware that it could certainly be a lot worse, but to go about in such a state, pulse high, face red, worried sick that someone would notice how nervous one was, was certainly less than ideal, and he felt sure that his body was secreting all kinds of harmful chemicals and that the more he worried about the harmful chemicals the faster they were pouring out of wherever it was they ..
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life
worrying
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George Saunders |
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ea8a44e
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Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others).
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George Saunders |
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e7663ce
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The thing about girls? Suzanne said. Is we are more content-driven.
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girls
men-and-women
relationships
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George Saunders |
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2b9a751
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Why were we made just so, to find so many things that happened every day pretty?
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George Saunders |
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2f9fe5d
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Sweet Evelyn, I think, I should have loved you better. Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he had yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid's mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her s..
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compassion
empathy
forgiveness
hatred
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George Saunders |
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b178de6
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I have lunch, flirt with some local grandmothers, undercut my flirting by crotching myself on the corner of a table as I leave. -- "The Great Divider"
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George Saunders |
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9c75765
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This meal we just ate?" says Aunt Lydia. "In many countries, this sort of meal would only be eaten by royalty." "There are countries where people could live one year on what we throw out in one week," says Grandpa Kirk. "I thought it was they could live one year on what we throw out in one day," says Grandma Sally. "I thought it was they could live ten years on what we throw out in one minute," says Uncle Gus. "Well anyway," says Doris. "We..
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George Saunders |
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01e4294
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And I woslike: O wow.
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George Saunders |
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014db58
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Strange, isn't it? To have dedicated one's life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one's life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one's labors utterly forgotten?
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George Saunders |
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183645b
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When young, we're anxious -- understandably -- to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you -- in particular you, of this generation -- may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can..
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George Saunders |
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27505de
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Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing. Only
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George Saunders |
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a6954b2
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By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions.
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George Saunders |
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ba97a54
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Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.
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america
civil-war
democracy
lincoln
united-states
united-states-of-america
us
usa
victory
war
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George Saunders |
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1894298
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The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don't know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them--if the storytelling is good enough--we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If t..
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George Saunders |
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c7f315d
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I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst. I had reason to know this. Had he not looked this way at birth, that way at four, another way at seven, been made entirely anew at nine? He had never stayed the same, even instant to instant. He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to ..
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George Saunders |
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35bbc6f
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No one who has ever done anything worth doing has gone uncriticized.
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George Saunders |
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0c7fb73
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In the town where I live, I have frequently observed a phenomenon I have come to think of as Samish-Sex Marriage.
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page-66
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George Saunders |
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6f6694d
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Is this the baby?" I said. Ma turned on me again. "What do you think it is?" she said. "A midget that can't talk?" --
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sarcasm
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George Saunders |
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d3196a1
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You were torturing a cat," she says. "With a freaking prod." "A prod I built myself in metal shop," he says. "But of course you never mention that."
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animal-cruelty
humor
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George Saunders |
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2cc58eb
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I have plenty of friends," she says. "Name one." She looks at me. Which I guess is sort of sweet."
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George Saunders |
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b30a772
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A house on the park. He'd seen it a million times. And now was in it. It smelled of man sweat and spaghetti sauce and old books. Like a library where sweaty men went to cook spaghetti.
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george saunders |
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55417ea
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I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead.
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failure
pathetic-people
reflection-on-life
regret
remorse
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George Saunders |
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5cd1407
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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.
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poor
poverty
rich
wealth
|
George Saunders |