“I’m a teacher at Syracuse University, I write short stories, and that’s pretty much it.” 

It’s a refreshing statement from writer George Saunders, made to sound simple because of its brevity, but wider and deeper than it appears at first.  Teaching and writing are more than enough for a full, deep, wide, soul-satisfying life.  Regardless of the standing-in-front-of-a-class-of-students aspect of teaching, neither of these occupations is showy.  But they are both lifelong practices that will take you where you need to go – all you have to give over is time, consistent effort, and a willingness to be taken somewhere.

What would your deceptively simple sentence be?  What’s the practice carrying you through life, deeper into life?

The whole video is charming but here’s another winner of a quote:  “But actually, the deeper goal is to be more loving, more courageous, more accepting, more patient.  But also less full of shit.  So, in other words, to be able to really step up to the beauties of life and the horrors of it, without any kind of flinching…If some of that could get into your work, that would be a plus.”

Here it is at The New Yorker.