I might take from the current political chaos a desire to somehow reflect its essential qualities in a story - the blatant lies that get accepted with repetition; the way mass media seems to be agitating people en masse; the way, particularly, that a relatively lucky and affluent and privileged population can be undone by a certain spoiled quality; that feeling when two decent people violently disagree, because they are arguing from two non-intersecting data sets - well, the list goes on.
George SaundersIt's one thing to be a perfectionist when you're alone, but when you're trying to make it work in an ensemble that's a whole different deal.
George SaundersWe're in the transition between birth and death. But the one that people often know about is the transition between the moment of death and whatever comes next, so reincarnation or heaven or hell.
George SaundersThe idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.
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 SaundersI live up in the hills, and I don't have any cable, and I have really slow satellite, so that does it - because being on the Internet is okay, but it takes a long time. I have a prediction that at some point, there will be a backlash. Like at the end of the '60s, there was that back-to-the-land movement, and I'm guessing that people will start consciously saying, "I'm not taking the phone with me," or "I'm only checking email x number of times a day," or "I'm not ever gonna self-Google," for example.
George Saunders