It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

— George Saunders

I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead.

— George Saunders

Josh joined her at the window. She let him look. He should know that the world was not all lessons and iguanas and Nintendo. It was also this muddy simple boy tethered like an animal.

— George Saunders

My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognizant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognizant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect.

— George Saunders

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.

— George Saunders

Once again I am only who I am.

— George Saunders

One day, walking near one of your Human houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I heard, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Human voice, making words. They sounded grate! They sounded like prey music! I listened to those music words until the sun went down...

— George Saunders

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 pronouncement 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 occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.

— George Saunders

One of pleasures of parenting, future reader: parent can positively influence kid, make moment kid will remember for rest of life, moment that alters his/her trajectory, opens up his/her heart + mind.

— George Saunders

[P]people think of compassion as, like, kindness. The image comes to mind of some nice New Age guy bending to something with a look on his face like he’s about to cry. And I don’t think that’s it. I think of it more as a quality of openness that comes with being in a state of unusual attentiveness.

— George Saunders