Vigil Quotes

“When young you were free of your body because it only brought you pleasure.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“My charge's wife swept in, set some clean towels on the love seat, went rushing back out again.

The stacked towels toppled off the love seat.

All but one.

The fallen towels landed in a heap of plastic detritus from his various medications, near a set of fresh, folded pajamas, which he now would never wear, and a stack of books he now would never read. Everything in the room was touched with the chaos that disrupted the operating energy of a household at such a time and showed that, all along, the appearance of control had been an illusion.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“Who else could you have been but exactly who you are? I said. Did you, in the womb, construct yourself? All your life you believed yourself to be making choices, but what looked like choices were so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body, and disposition thrust upon you that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“Imagine a fellow in manacles: hungry, thirsty, flea-bitten, tormented by his mind in hideous ways. And you (unmanacled, free, comfortable, sane) walk past.

You cannot free him.

But you might comfort him.

I felt a new and powerful truth being beamed directly into me, by a vast, beneficent God, in the form of this unyielding directive:

Comfort.

Comfort, for all else is futility.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“Is it lying when one knows how one wants things to turn out and then says what is needed to achieve that result? said R.

Lying when a person uses his considerable reputation and his mastery of public communication to thrash his opponents by redirecting the attention of the general populace, thus infecting the people with the tiniest sliver of doubt, which, widely propagated, becomes a sizable wedge of doubt? said G.

Doesn’t every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public’s attention?

Doesn’t the public have the right to know? said G.

And decide for itself? said R.

Are you calling the public stupid? said G.

Do you not believe in democracy? said R.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“[Is it] Lying when a person uses his considerable reputation and his mastery of public communications to thrash his opponents by redirecting the attention of the general populace, thus infecting the people with the tiniest sliver of doubt, which, widely propagated, becomes a sizable wedge of doubt? said G.
Doesn't every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public's attention?
Doesn't the public have the right to know? said G.
And decide for itself? said R.
Are you calling the public stupid? said G.
Do you not believe in democracy? said R.
R. turned to me.
We were, in life, eminent scientists, he said.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“That's what powerful men did. Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“Easy enough to regret a thing. Not good to get in the habit. When you regretted, folks pounced. You were weak with regret, they felt it, they pounced.

Then what? You had less power, could do less good.

So: no regrets.

Ever.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“A tank. His wife had once called him that. He rolled right over whatever life put in front of him.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“Always, in the bygone days, men would tell me with great certainty what I should do and then, if I hesitated, would tell me again, towering over me, smelling of cigars and mouthwash, superior smirks creeping over their huge-pored faces, and then I would, often, nearly always--well, I would do it. I would do whatever that man had asked me to do, within reason, seeing this as a form of kindness on my part, so as not to force the poor fellow, who no doubt had a lot on his mind, to, uh, raise his voice or otherwise become, well, frustrated.

Frustrated with me.

The Frenchman was frowning.

It was always their disappointment that got me.

Even more so than their anger.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“On the far side of a three-story glass wall, a stream of children appeared, spilling like a candy-colored waterfall down a stairway inside.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“To comfort one who remains willfully ignorant of what he has done is to provide no comfort at all, he said.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“You seem different, he said.

I am different, I said. I'm Jill. Jill Blaine. Jill 'Doll' Blaine.

Weren't you always? he said.

Not this much, I said.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“There was a story often told. Perhaps you’ve heard this one. Don’t stop me if you have, though, ha ha (I dearly love to tell it): Little boy’s grousing: doesn’t like cars. Because of “the pollution,” you know where this one’s going, I bet. The father pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Then I suppose you’ll want to walk.”

End of objections from el kiddo.
Your choice, Jacques.

Dying in the back of a horse cart stuck in the mud? Or zinging toward help, air-con blasting?

Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the latter.
We had.
The world had.

That was what was so damn stupid about it. People forgot the empty larder. Forgot drought, forgot famine. Forgot what it was like to be at the mercy of the world. The Nesbitts’d brought over a charity basket. During that lean period. After the hay burned up, the little feeder stream went dry, Bremer refused to re-up their loan. You best believe I was drooling. Father shot me a look. Move the slightest muscle toward that basket, my young swain, his eyes were saying, you’ll find yourself bunking down in the barn with the heifers.

The bread in that basket was rock-hard and the bacon stringy and the apples home to more than a few worms.

But to us it was a feast.

Whereas nowadays folks padded past climate-controlled cases of out-of-season vegetables and fish from faraway seas and meat from animals who fed in meadows under mountain ranges whose names a person could hardly pronounce, thinking, Yap, yap, yap, big deal, pork from Denmark, salmon from the Bering Strait, loaves of woven bread from Ferrara, all of this is my right.

When what it was, was a goddamn miracle.”
― George Saunders, Vigil

“But be not afraid”
― George Saunders, Vigil