George Saunders

You're going to find out that you have certain built-in limitations, your body and your muscle type, all that kind of thing, but also your willpower, your interest.

So my thought is that even those things are kind of pre-given to you at birth.

Now, I think people sometimes struggle with this, and I struggle with it, but the idea is this.

If you could imagine somebody that you cared about, and maybe you had a fraught relationship with that person, they just died, and they're lying there in front of you.

and you say, ah, I wish he'd been more X. I wish he'd been more understanding.

If he should have been more articulate, why wasn't he?

And I think if we dig deeply enough into it in this absolute sense, you'll find that there is a kind of inevitability to that.

Now, that's Jill's point of view.

What she's doing is saying, it's fine.

Whatever you did is fine.

Just leave the self and all is forgiven.

It's kind of my point of view, but as I wrote the book, I got more and more skeptical about it as I examined it.

There's a guy in the book called The Frenchman.

His point of view is bullshit.

Don't give me that.

You know, when that guy was alive, somebody could have kicked his butt enough to get him to be more of quantity X. So he's urging her to get after Boone and do whatever's necessary to get him in relation to truth.

The Frenchman's saying he's still breathing.

So you have a chance, if you approach it skillfully, to put him in alignment with truth.

And that's where the salvation would come from.

Even though he can't move, he's never going to move again.