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 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
Whatever your supposed politics are – left, right – if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way. – George Saunders
I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesnt eradicate the reality of the suffering. Its all true at once, kind of humming and sublime. – George Saunders
All I watch is the Food Network. I took a cheesemaking class a few weeks ago, and I told my family and friends to only get me kitchen stuff on my birthday. Im into every kind of cookbook and anything by Anthony Bourdain. Id love to own a restaurant if I could find the right chef. – Jesse McCartney