I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was going to have to have some earnestness in it.
George SaundersI'm always nice when I do drugs. But, you know, I'm nicer on the drug called "writing."
George SaundersI don't feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose.
George SaundersIt would be so weird if we knew just as much as we needed to know to answer all the questions of the universe. Wouldn't that be freaky? Whereas the probability is high that there is a vast reality that we have no way to perceive, that's actually bearing down on us now and influencing everything.
George Saunders