George Saunders

Yes.

Well, to the first point, I think there's a mistake when we think someone who's done something beautiful in art must be a wonderful person.

It's just like if somebody can

play football really well, they might be a really bad person.

They just have a skill.

The second thing is I think these benefits, which I talk a lot about it because I feel it every day.

I see it happening to me.

They're not necessarily going to fix everything.

They're sort of incremental changes of consciousness on the part of the writer and the reader.

I'm not claiming it as some kind of universal solution, but I also think we, to me anyway, it's becoming clear that

Writing and reading is a way of simply underscoring that human connection is important, that you can know my mind and I can know yours, which is a vastly consoling idea, and we need it.

Just from my own experience, so many times in my life, I felt a more articulate version of myself emerge after a period of writing.

And when that happens, the world changes.

Well, the first time that I was in Rochester and I was writing my first book, mostly on the bus, and I just would take two or three pages

And because I only had those pages, I would concentrate so hard on a kind of Rubik's Cube editing.

Is this better?

Is this better?

And after a week or so of that, the language in which I was thinking was higher, more precise.

And suddenly, your perceptions change.

Of course they do.