I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life Ive done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society. – George Saunders
A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did. – George Saunders
I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And hes made of sugar. – George Saunders
I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like Im in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life – or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. – George Saunders
Most of Roosevelts innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN. – Thomas Frank