W. L. George Quotes

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it. or: Those who have never heard of good system development practice are condemned to reinvent it.

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.

science is the most revolutionary force in the world.

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude.

My gratitude to them [my first teachers] grows as I myself grow older.

The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers.

The intensity of a national culture should be represented by... the general education level and... the exceptional merit of a small elite of pioneers.

Some forty years of experience in my field as a scholar and as a teacher have given me great confidence mixed with greater humility.

On the basis of my historical experience, I fully believe that mathematics of the 25th century will be as different from that of today as the latter is from that of the 16th century.

A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space.

I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.

The most hopeful thing in the stories, I hope, is wit. I make it up. If I make up a world in which we're ruled by big talking turds, it doesn't mean that we are. So you shouldn't feel depressed.

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.

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

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.

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.

Your first responsibility is to yourself and to your own goodness of heart.

A country doesn't need a businessman to run it: it needs a heartful, worldly, compassionate leader.

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.

I'm always nice when I do drugs. But, you know, I'm nicer on the drug called "writing."

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.

Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'

My go-to default is to try to be nice, which I feel does less harm in the long run than trying to be, say, assertive. If I am nice and maybe too passive, I find that easier to live with.

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

Success is like a mountain in front of you that keeps growing. If you're not careful, it will take up your whole life.

Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.

My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.

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.

We're in the transition between birth and death. But the one that people often know about is the transition between the moment of death and whatever comes next, so reincarnation or heaven or hell.

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.

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.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

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.

It's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.

As the writer of this book [Lincoln in the Bardo], what I loved was the feeling of having so many surprises come at the end that I hadn't really planned or planted.

It is very easy for us to go, you know, "I am being cruel to be kind," when really we are just ... being cruel. Because it makes us feel big, or whatever.

So many people mentioned this at these rallies. You go to these things and it's kind of like an oldies concert. I mean, it's not hostile.

You can say you're a liberal and everybody laughs and it's a good time.

Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.

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.

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.

All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.

I've seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.

As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.

That's the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, "Well, I don't know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can."

Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: 'Oh, I should tweet about this.'

The story sometimes writes you into a corner.

I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.