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
When I was a kid, I took The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus. – George Saunders
We have that illusion that we are deciding what to make a character do, in order to convey our message or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide whos been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water. – 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