If I can be more efficient, I'm actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.
George SaundersIt was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.
George SaundersI am always considering the reader. Although this is admittedly kind of odd: Which reader? On what day? In what mood? For me, that "reader" is actually just me, if I had never read the story before.
George SaundersA sort of fearlessness - the notion that a person could be comfortable with (even interested in) whatever arises. I sure can't do it, but I think all of us have had little glimpse of that power, often when we are really actively loving someone or something and feel that little eradication of self that happens when we are engaged in feeling protective or especially fond of someone else. I associate that feeling with a corresponding clarity of purpose and a disappearance of confusion.
George SaundersWhatever happens, we can deal with it if we admit that it's happening and so on. So to be comfortable with what is - that is a real superpower.
George SaundersI don't like that new age posture where you kind of tilt your head. I don't like that posture right now. I want something a little more confident and more sure of the values that we're defending, which are the old ones, love and empathy and patience and tolerance and civility. Not to get into politics or anything.
George Saunders