62
" We might think of a story as a kind of ceremony, like the Catholic Mass, or a coronation, or a wedding. We understand the heart of the Mass to be communion, the heart of a coronation to be the moment the crown goes on, the heart of the wedding to be the exchanging of the vows. All of those other parts (the processionals, the songs, the recitations, and so on) will be felt as beautiful and necessary to the extent that they serve the heart of the ceremony. "
― George Saunders , A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
64
" I'd say there's a general thesis in here somewhere: any story that suffers from what seems like a moral failing (that seems sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, pedantic, appropriative, derivative of another writer's work, and so on) will be seen, with sufficient analytical snooping, to be suffering from a technical failing, and if that failing is addressed, it will (always) become a better story. "
― George Saunders , A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
69
" room swayed, eddied, then came back into focus. It was so hot. The clown-woman gave him the number. Bill sat on a bench. A couple nearby was fighting. The woman was claiming the man didn’t wash his rear end well, ever. The poor man looked humiliated. The woman was talking so loudly. The man was shriveled and old and defenseless. He literally held his hat in his hands. Bill glared at the woman. She glared back. Then the man glared at Bill. He made a menacing gesture with the hat in his hands. Now the couple was united, against Bill, and the man’s unclean ass seemed to have been totally forgotten. This was always the way for poor Bill. Once he had intervened when a man was beating his wife, and the wife had turned on him, and the man had turned on him, and even some people passing by had turned on him. Even a nun had given him a gratuitous kick with her thick nun shoe. A robotic voice intoned Bill’s number, which was 332. Bill approached the desk. To his surprise, he saw Angie, his ex-wife, working there, behind the desk. Angie looked more beautiful than ever. "
― George Saunders , A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
73
" ...We experience rather than articulate the result...We're always rationally explaining and articulating things, but we are at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs or doesn't in that instant, what we turn to art form is precisely this moment when we know something, we feel it but we can't articulate because it's too complex and multiple. But the knowing in such moments is real, I say this is what art is for, to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it's superior to our usual, conceptual, reductive way." A swim in a pond in the rain by George Saunders. "
― George Saunders , A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life