George Saunders

I could feel that ship of literary ambition just sailing away without me very happily.

So there was a time that I now remember very fondly where I just was like, well, maybe that just wasn't meant for you.

But keep trying.

Try to publish the story a year was the idea.

And that was a very sweet period because the idea suddenly—

The activity of writing got separated from ambition as much as I've ever had it separated.

It was very Zen activity, just stealing maybe 20 minutes a day to concentrate on a bit of prose.

And it felt very pure.

No, no, it doesn't.

Well, I think I came to it out of a kind of a vast insecurity.

I had a couple of high school teachers who intervened on my behalf and got me into the Colorado School of Mines for geophysics.

So I was so far behind the curve.

I hadn't really done much work in school.

Went out there and I was just barely hanging in.

And that was a really jarring thing.

So along comes Atlas Shrugged.

And at least the way I read it was, you're special because you believe in selfishness.

And at that point, just I got caught up on you're special.

That was enough, you know.

So I think I started kind of just using it as the one way in that environment I could feel