My mind goes really quickly and I tend to talk really fast, as you've probably heard, I sometimes lose track of my syntax, as I'm talking that fast. The only thing I try to do, well, it's slow down, but also I do something when I'm reading that's similar to when I'm writing a section, which is to really try to imagine you on the other side, in a certain way, as an intelligent, sympathetic presence who's rooting for me to tell you a good story.
George SaundersAmerica, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamourous reasonable voice.
George SaundersWriting and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.
George SaundersFiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
George SaundersIf you really think back to the great writers, there's a lot of happiness in Tolstoy; there's a lot of love, there's childbirth, and there's dances. And likewise in Shakespeare and even Cervantes, there's a lot of celebrations of the positive manifestations of life. Technically, I found it harder to do, so that's kind of a good late-life challenge - without getting sentimental or chirpy.
George Saunders