Famous Quotes

"Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another."

George Saunders on Truth

More quotes about Truth

• "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

  Marcus Aurelius on Truth

• "Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."

  Albert Einstein on Truth

• "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

  Buddha on Truth

• "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

  Martin Luther King, Jr. on Truth

• "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

  Winston Churchill on Truth

More quotes by George Saunders

• "We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish."

• "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."

• "I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime."

• "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."

• "I'm finding, as I get older, that I'm not much of a believer in redemption. I mean, I believe in redemption in real life - redemption does happen, and it's cool when it does - but I find myself getting leery of my desire for it in stories (especially my own)."