"If you haven’t read you don’t have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience." ― George Saunders Topic(s): Experience More From George Saunders "I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I’ve done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society." "It’s funny with fiction – once you cut something, it hasn’t happened anymore." "We have that illusion that we are ‘deciding’ what to make a character do, in order to ‘convey our message’ or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who’s been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water." More In Experience "We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn’t use irony to reduce their power."― Manuel Puig "What we have to get clear to kids is that when you offer your stillness and open yourself to the experience of music, it pays you back more than you give."― David Ogden Stiers "Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either."― Helen Keller