George Saunders

And you both believe in them and you think they're full of it.

That's the whole game of being a novelist.

So in that part, I remember thinking, okay, George, if you were on your deathbed and some evidence was presented that you'd wasted your life,

what would your response be?

And of course you want to think it would be, oh, I am corrected.

But in fact, you double down, you say, yeah, but you know, I wrote books, you know?

And so, so that's a big, big danger, I think for, for anybody.

And certainly for me, you, the praise comes in and you accept it very happily and it inflates you.

the blame comes in and you don't accept it quite so easily and you deflect it.

That's right.

That's a good point.

Yes, yes.

But for sure, and one of the cool things about getting older, actually, is that you realize that

Everything in the universe is giving you the memo that you're temporary, you know, and that you're on the way out.

Your hairline, you know, your body, the way you feel.

But then in a moment where you get praised, that information contradicts that somehow.

And the ego goes, oh, we are important.

You know, we are permanent.

I'm still growing in import and, you know.

Well, I was trained at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, and what we would do is we'd go into an area where there might be oil, and then we'd plant a dynamite charge 10 or 15 feet underground, blow it off, and then with a sort of sophisticated system of sensors, we would record the sound waves as they came back up.