Pastoralia Quotes

“Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Good God, but life could be less than easy, not that he was unaware that it could certainly be a lot worse, but to go about in such a state, pulse high, face red, worried sick that someone would notice how nervous one was, was certainly less than ideal, and he felt sure that his body was secreting all kinds of harmful chemicals and that the more he worried about the harmful chemicals the faster they were pouring out of wherever it was they came from.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“I have plenty of friends," she says.
"Name one."
She looks at me.
Which I guess is sort of sweet.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“You were torturing a cat," she says. "With a freaking prod."
"A prod I built myself in metal shop," he says. "But of course you never mention that.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“For dinner Jade microwaves some Stars-n-Flags. They're addictive. They put sugar in the sauce and sugar in the meat nuggets. I think also caffeine. Someone told me the brown streaks in the Flags are caffeine. We have like five bowls each.
After dinner the babies get fussy and Min puts a mush of ice cream and Hershey's syrup in their bottles and we watch The Worst That Could Happen, a half hour computer simulation of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could. A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while he's wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“I hold the biscuits in front of his face and he stands up.
"What do I have to do?" he says.
"Nothing," I say. "They're for you."
"Are they poisoned?" he says.
"No," I say.
"Eat one," he says.
So I do.
"Probably the others are poisoned," he says. "Eat a fraction of each."
I eat a corner off each biscuit. He looks at the reminders suspiciously, then sniffs them.
"I'm not sure it's worth it," he says. "How I wish you'd never come. Perhaps you've left the poison off of just those corners."
I begin to realize I'll doubt whatever information he gives me.
"Lick the entire biscuit," he says. "Then give them to me."
So I lick each biscuit.
"Both sides," he says.
I lick both sides of each biscuit. I give him the wet biscuits and he cracks them open and sniffs them. Then he puts them in his pocket.
"What do you want?" he says. "Now that you've failed to poison me to death.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“We pretend to catch and eat more pretend bugs than could ever actually live in one cave. The number of pretend bugs we pretend to catch and eat would in reality basically fill a cave the size of our cave.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Her hair looked like her hair in the dream and her eyes looked like her eyes in the dream, and as for her body, he couldn't tell, she was wearing a mumu.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“What I'm putting forth," he said, "is that the four of us make some memories, become fast friends and abandon starchy old mind-sets about monogamy. The world's gone crazy. Let's do the same."
"The answer is no," Dad said. "And I'm surprised I'm not punching you.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“At Sea Oak there's no sea and no oak, just a hundred subsidized apartments and a rear view of FedEx. Min and Jade are feeding their babies while watching How My Child Died Violently. Min's my sister. Jade's our cousin. How My Child Died Violently is hosted by Matt Merton, a six-foot-five blond who's always giving the parents shoulder rubs and telling them they've been sainted by pain. Today's show features a ten-year-old who killed a five-year-old for refusing to join his gang. The ten-year-old strangled the five-year-old with a jump rope, filled his mouth with baseball cards, then locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out until his parents agreed to take him to FunTimeZone, where he confessed, then dove screaming into a mesh cage full of plastic balls. The audience is shrieking threats at the parents of the killer while the parents of the victim urge restraint and forgiveness to such an extent that finally the audience starts shrieking threats at them too. Then it's a commercial.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“But not to worry. Those of you who have no need to be worried should not in the least be worried. As for those of you who should be worried, it's a little late to start worrying now, you should have started months ago, when it could've done you some good, because at this point, what's decided is decided, or would have been decided, if those false rumors we are denying, the rumors about the firings which would be starting this week if they were slated to begin, were true, which we have jut told you, they aren't." (63)”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“How can Janet know she’s not being her best self if someone doesn’t tell her, then right away afterwards harshly discipline her?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“And remember I told you about the bad people in the old days, who used to burn witches, and how scary that must've been for the witches, who were really just frightened old ladies who'd made the mistake of being too intelligent for the era they were living in”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Probably someday some guy representing me will be in there, and some punk who I'm precursor of will be hooting at me, asking why my shoes were made out of dead cows and so forth? Because in that future time, wearing dead sking on your feet, no, they won't do that. That will seem to them like barbarity”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“That's the roasting goat", her husband said. "Everything wasn't all prettied up. When you ate meat, it was like you were eating actual meat, the flesh of a dead animal, an animal that maybe had been licking your hand just a few hours before".”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Was he some kind of worrywart? It worried him.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Show your cock," she says, and dies again.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Chestia era, oare ea o să-l dorească? Era bătrân. Bătrâior. Când se ridica prea repede, îi pocnea genunchiul. În ultima vreme începuseră să-i sângereze gingiile. Plus că nu avea degetele de la picioare. Cu toate acestea, de ce să se vândă ieftin? Avea o mică afacere doar a lui. Avea un început de gută, da, și începuse să i se rărească părul, dar pe de altă parte era lat în umeri și în piept, așa că până la urmă, cu toată guta, efectul general era de putere, ceea ce fetelor le plăcea, și cel puțin avea capul bine proporționat în raport cu restul corpului, lucru cu care ea nu putea să se laude, deși e adevărat că el încă locuia cu maică-sa. Ei bine, era cineva perfect?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“To some people, fifteen years of good loyal service means squat. All's we can say is, watch your damn backs.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Why do you think everything you think is everything everybody else thinks?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Morse found it nerve-wracking to cross the St. Jude grounds just as school was being dismissed, because he felt that if he smiled at the uniformed Catholic children they might think he was a wacko or pervert and if he didn't smile they might think he was an old grouch made bitter by the world, which surely, he felt, by certain yardsticks, he was. Sometimes he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't even a wacko of sorts, although certainly he wasn't a pervert. Of that he was certain. Or relatively certain. Being overly certain, he was relatively sure, was what eventually made one a wacko.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“It's the freaking American way--you start out in a dangerous craphole and work hard so you can someday move up to a somewhat less dangerous craphole. And finally maybe you get a mansion.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Although certainly, dwelling on problems doesn't solve them. Although on the other hand, thinking positively about problems also doesn't solve them. But at least then you feel positive, which is, or should be, you know, empowering.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“...someday someone would dig up his yellow pad and virtually cry eureka when they realized what a teeming fragment of minutia, and yet crucial minutia, had been found...”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“I want to stab you, Dad," says the little boy. "With a sharp sword, you're so dumb.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“and don’t take no shit from nobody, unless taking shit from them is part of your master plan to get the best of them by tricking them into being your friend.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“All afternoon we pretend to catch and eat small bugs. We pretend to catch and eat more pretend bugs than could ever actually live in one cave. The number of pretend bugs we pretend to catch and eat would in reality basically fill a cave the size of our cave. It feels like we’re racing. At one point she gives me a look, like: Slow down, going so fast is inauthentic. I slow down. I slow down, monitoring my rate so that I am pretending to catch and eat small bugs at exactly the same rate at which she is pretending to catch and eat small bugs, which seems to me prudent, I mean, there is no way she could have a problem with the way I’m pretending to catch and eat small bugs if I’m doing it exactly the way she’s doing it.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“she called him over and gave him a deep warm kiss on the mouth that was so much like the kiss he'd been waiting for all his life that it abruptly woke him”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“Why Does My Loved One Appear Somewhat Larger?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia

“For every hundred bucks I make, I set aside five for Bernie's stone. What do you write on something like that? LIFE PASSED HER BY? DIED DISAPPOINTED? CAME BACK TO LIFE BUT FELL APART?”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia