All of it, but in particular: “I notice that Doug has an incredible natural enthusiasm for anything we happen to get right. Even a single good line is worthy of praise. When he comes across a beautiful story in a magazine, he shares it with us. If someone else experiences a success, he celebrates it. He can find, in even the most dismal student story, something to praise. Often, hearing him talk about a story you didn’t like, you start to like it too—you see, as he is seeing, the seed of something good within it. He accepts you and your work just as he finds it, and is willing to work with you wherever you are. This has the effect of emboldening you, and making you more courageous in your work, and less defeatist about it.”
—”My Writing Education: A Timeline,” George Saunders

“Listen,’ he said to her. ‘Do you want to just shag a pony right now, get back on track?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I feel gross. I feel depressed.’

‘I feel gross, too. Let’s do it. Two gross people licking each other’s belly buttons.’

She went to the bathroom and got the jar of enabler. They took their positions on the bed.

He hoped he could. He hoped he could. He hoped he could.

He was cold and insecure, so he left his shirt on. And his socks.

They used a cream. Their used their hands. They used an object or two. During the brief strain of actual fornication they persisted with casual conversation about the next day’s errands. In the early days of their marriage, this had seemed wicked and sexy, some ironic ballast against the animal greed. Now it just seemed efficient, and the animal greed no longer appeared. Minus the wet spot at the end, and the minor glow one occasionally felt, their sex wasn’t so different from riding the subway.”
—”Cold Little Bird,” Ben Marcus

“I still remained silent. Yes, ‘The Duke’ would obviously make the grade with her! So be it! What did that have to do with me? I said goodbye to her and all her charms: goodbye! I attempted to console myself by imagining the worst possible things about her, I took a positive pleasure in dragging her through the mud. The only thing that annoyed me was my taking off my hat to the couple, if I had really done it. Why should i tip my hat to people like that? She meant nothing to me any more, nothing at all. She wasn’t even the slightest bit beautiful to me, she had lost all her beauty, frightful, how ugly she had become! It wasn’t out of the question that she had looked only at me—that wouldn’t surprise me: she was probably feeling remorse now. But that didn’t mean I had to go fall down at her feet, and bow and scrape like a fool, especially when she had lost so much of her good looks lately. ‘The Duke’ could have her then, and good riddance! Perhaps one day I would simply walk proudly right past her without even glancing in her direction. It wasn’t impossible that I might do that even if she were to look straight at me, and what’s more even if her dress were absolutely blood red! That could very easily happen! Yes, that would be a triumph! If I knew anything about anything, I would finish my play this very night, and within eight days I would bring that girl to her knees. Charms and all, yes, even with all her charms….”
—Knut Hamsun

“In thinking about your approach to your own work, you might consider your ideal reader. Write to your mother. Write to your best friend. Write to the love of your life. Write to your worst enemy. I think you’ll discover that the work for the enemy will be of highest quality. It will be the most daring and smart, because if someone is your enemy, she has the power to hurt you, and so you must hold her in very high regard and will take some pleasure in making her fear for her life.”
—”How to Shit,” The Masters Review

“Don’t listen to anyone. Not us, either. It’s fatal.”
—from Five Dials

“Start with immigration, and the idea that any president could or should engineer the mass expulsion of 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Not one candidate said that a 21st-century trail of tears, deploying railroad cars, federal troops and police dogs on a continental scale, cannot happen and would be morally obscene. Ben Carson said, ‘If anybody knows how to do that, that I would be willing to listen.’ They accepted the need to ‘control our borders’ with a 2,000-mile fence. Even Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once an immigration moderate, endorsed the fence. Mr. Carson actually suggested two fences, for double security, with a road in between. Do these people have to be sent to the Rio Grande Valley to see how ludicrous a border fence — over mountains, vast deserts, remote valleys and private property — would be? And it won’t solve the problem they are railing against, which doesn’t exist anyway. Illegal immigration has fallen essentially to zero.

“On foreign affairs, there was a lot of talk about not talking with bad people. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said his first act would be to tear up the Iran deal, throwing the nuclear race back to the ayatollahs and rupturing global alliances — but making a point! Carly Fiorina said: ‘What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message.’

We get the message, and it’s scary.

Jeb Bush spun a particularly repellent fantasy. Speaking reverently of his brother the president, he said, ‘He kept us safe,’ and invoked the carnage of 9/11. Wait, what? Did he mean George W. Bush, who was warned about the threat that Al Qaeda would attack? Who then invaded a non sequitur country, Iraq, over a nonexistent threat?”
—NYT