Liberation Day Quotes

“It did not seem (and please destroy this letter after you have read it) that someone so clownish could disrupt something so noble and time-tested and seemingly strong, something that had been with us literally every day of our lives. We had taken, in other words, a profound gift for granted. Did not know the gift was a fluke, a chimera, a wonderful accidental of consensus and mutual understanding.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“When you reach a certain age, you see that time is all we have. By which I mean, moments like those springing deer this morning, and watching your mother be born, and sitting at the dining room table here waiting for the phone to ring and announce that a certain baby (you) had been born, or that day when all of us hiked out at Point Lobos. That extremely loud seal, your sister's scarf drifting down, down to that black, briny boulder, the replacement you so generously bought her in Monterey, how pleased you made her with your kindness. Those things were real. That is what (that is all) one gets. All this other stuff is real only to the extent that it interferes with those moments.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“I am going, friend, I am all but gone, I believe you prideful and wrong but I have no desire, now, to cure you. Your wrongness was an idea I had. I am all but gone. My idea of your wrongness will go with me. Your rightness is an idea you are having. It will go with you. For all of that, I hope you live forever, and if the place falls down around you, as it seems to be doing, I hope even that brings you joy. It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice. I feel the truth of this in my body now. I am trying not to be terrified. But I am sometimes, in the night...

That letter exists in my mind. But I am too tired to write it. Well, that is not true. I am not too tired.
I'm just not ready.
The surge of pride and life and self is still too strong in me.
But I will get there. I will. I will write it yet.
Only I must not wait too long.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“When will I death? Might I death alone? Probably yes Little scared about that. I must say
But am not death yet
Not dead yet.
Not yet.
And not yet.
World lays out before me new with each click of step and swish of aspen leaves above for that I say thanks For as long as world is shiny new there is no death and what lovely may I not yet do?”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Your grandmother and I (and many others) would have had to be more extreme people than we were, during that critical period, to have done whatever it was we should have been doing. And our lives had not prepared us for extremity, to mobilize or to be as focussed and energized as I can see, in retrospect, we would have needed to be. We were not prepared to drop everything in defense of a system that was, to us, like oxygen: used constantly, never noted. We were spoiled, I think I am trying to say. As were those on the other side: willing to tear it all down because they had been so thoroughly nourished by the vacuous plenty in which we all lived, a bountiful condition that allowed people to thrive and opine and swagger around like kings and queens while remaining ignorant of their own history.

What would you have had me do? What would you have done?”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Sweetie, no one is coming. To see how good we have done/are doing. It is just us. Forever. Until a flood gets us or the air or food stops coming. What a joke, the way we live. The worry, the suspicion, the stress, the meanness. I keep dreaming that these dead are telling me what they would do if they could come back. What nobody has said so far: Rat out more folks and kick harder when asked.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Why must all nighttime farm windows be orange? is a sweet mystery to think upon as down to sleep you”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“I just want to say that history, when it arrives, may not look as you expect, based on the reading of history books. Things in there are always so clear. One knows exactly what one would have done.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“They brought the first guy back and the two old hippies sat side by side, seemingly wary of each other. She felt that each, in his mind, was making the case for being the more intelligent and authentic washed-up former hippie.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“I want what I have previously always wanted most: i.e., to be so good at what I do that none may find fault with me and everyone is super pleased with me and agrees that I have no real competition in my field.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Those things were real. That is what (that is all) one gets. All this other stuff is real only to the extent that it interferes with those moments.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Peace is not, apparently, the general human intention, although in the spare hour (in the dear home, in the individual heart) it may sometimes seem to”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Is this world we have made a world in which lovers may thrive?

Though I will not live to see it, and dread the kicking that must come, may these words play some part in bringing the old world down.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Sweetie, no one is coming. To see how good we have done/are doing. It is just us. Forever. Until a flood gets us or the air or food stops coming. What a joke, the way we live. The worry, the suspicion, the stress, the meanness. I keep dreaming that these dead are telling me what they would do if they could come back. What nobody has said so far: Rat out more folks and kick harder when asked.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Good old Mom. Dead for nine years now. He hoped, wherever she was, she knew how much he’d loved her. Such a sweetie. All she’d ever needed was one break. One kind person in her corner. For things, just once, to go her way. But no. She kept getting kicked. Over and over. By whoever felt like it. If you kicked someone like that, you were just one more person on the list of the many people who’d kicked her. Nobody would ever blame you. Whereas if you stood up for someone like that, you risked becoming—well, you risked becoming one of them.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“He wishes to say: Stop, please, stop, let me think all of this over. How did I come to be here? Is there not a method by which I may turn time back, and be home?”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Peace is not, apparently, the general human intention, although in the spare hour (in the dear home, in the individual heart) it may sometimes seem to be.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“When will I death? Might I death alone? Probably yes Little scared about that. I must say
But am not death yet
Not dead yet.
Not yet.
And not yet.
World lays out before me new with each click of step and swish of aspen leaves above for that I say thanks For as long as world is shiny new there is no death and what lovely may I not yet do?”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“...or said some racist thing out loud at church...”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“It is always regrettable to have attracted the attention of adult son Mike.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“hurt my feelings.” No. When you reach my age, and if you are lucky enough to have a grandson like you (stellar), you will know”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Every day starts out as a certain day, dear reader, which, when it begins, we call today. Hence, every day, as we wake to a new today, we must assume that today may be the day. For what, though? That is what is unknown, that is what I must find out, and quickly now: for what will each of my coming todays henceforth be for?”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Sometimes in life the foundation upon which one stands will give tilt, and everything one has previously believed and held dear will begin sliding about, and suddenly all things will seem strange and new.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“I guess one never realizes how little one wants to be kicked to death until one hears a crowd doing that exact same thing to someone nearby,” I say.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Exciting! Have been waiting long for Job One Day Job One turns out per Jer is: high and noble as all getout Per Jer: I will stand for freedom For poor and sick Will defend weak From oppressors.

More Defining, with help of HandiPics:

Freedom = cartoon bird flies above land, smile on beak.

Poor = sad child, pockets sticking out of pants.

Sick = thin guy in bed, “X”s for eyes.

Weak = guy in desert, trying to reach water glass, failing.

Oppressor = tall guy with monster face sticks stick into body of weak as, in four HandiPics in row, weak gets more weak with each poke.

Why do oppressors wish to poke weak? I say.

They’re bad, says Jer. Have to be stopped.

From doing that, I say.

Correcto, says Jer. And you’re a big part of the solution.

What the what! as Jer might say.

Never have I felt being me to be so worth it so far.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Everyone had a thing, or several things, and her view was, if you loved the universe (which she did, or liked to think she did, or anyway sure tried to) you had to love all of it.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“Brenda was having none of it. She sat there like one of the working-class ladies of his childhood, bitter fighters with bright red faces, emanating a savage scary blankness that he understood to mean: Fuck you, you are not forgiven.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“I take the tokens, get up, and buy, actually, two Cokes, because today is Twofer Tuesday, wherein you get two of whatever you order for the price of just one of those things.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“You are trapped in you, the beam said.

Yeah, well, who isn’t? she thought.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day