If you have a friend, what's the best way you can experience her beauty? It's to really accept her. She's weird in this way, I accept it. She's hard to talk to, I accept it. Then that person eventually will come all the way out into the sun. I think it's the same way with our talent. We say, "Look, I'm not going to judge you. I'm going to try to use you in the very best way."
George SaundersThere were several points where I would kind of turn to the book and say, "Get thee behind me." I don't think real novelists do that. But I make a distinction between prose that's very efficiency-minded (like, the minimum I can get away with), versus loosening the screws and letting the words spill out beautifully and so on.
George SaundersA hip-looking teen watches an elderly woman hobble across the street on a walker. "Grammy's here!" he shouts. He puts some MacAttack Mac&Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won't be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook. A truck comes around the corner and hits Grammy, sending her flying over the roof into the backyard, where luckily she lands on a trampoline. Unluckily, she bounces back over the roof, into the front yard, landing on a rosebush.
George SaundersI understand what something short should be like. I understand beauty in that form. If I start extending, somehow I kind of lose my bearings.
George Saunders