Success makes opportunities and so many of those "opportunities" are actually exemptions - from hardship, from unfriendliness, from struggle.
George SaundersI guess: People who are comfortable enough with reality to allow other sorts of realities and other mindsets to just be, and then to regard these with real interest and joy [and the joy appears in the prose quality itself].
George SaundersI think kindness is a sort of gateway virtue - having that simple aspiration can get you into deep water very quickly - in a good way.
George SaundersI feel that there is nothing that can happen to a person that is banal. Everything that happens to us is interesting.
George SaundersWhen you're out there in America, meeting with regular people, it's a pretty mellow, relaxed, kind-hearted country. The direction from the top, from the President, is following mean-spirited tendencies: fear and undue caution and distrust of the other, so it's very depressing.
George SaundersIn a story, for example, you'll start off with a character who is a little bit of a cartoon. That's not satisfying and you start revising. And as you revise you always are making it better by being specific and by observing more closely, which actually is really the same as saying you love your characters. The close observation equals love of them.
George Saunders