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
We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate – and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish. – George Saunders
The cool parts – the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as the Vegas of the Middle East or the Venice of the Middle East or the Disney World of the Middle East, if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert – have been built in the last ten years. – 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 advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Virginibus Puerisque II,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881