The Metaphysics of Kindness

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'If you think, well, if i did something that cause me to inflect positively more than negatively over the course of 80 years, that's a big difference,' says Thon. 'That tat's a fact. That's science.' He adds: 'You can't do that if you've already decided what those 15 thousand instances are going to be before you get there,. And i thing also got on finding as, you can’t do that without failing a lot'

George Saunders is the author of eleven books. His latest is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.

”I really have so much affection for being alive. I really enjoy it. And yet, I’m a little negative minded in a lot of ways too, like I really think things tend to be fucked up. ... To get that on the page—to sufficiently praise the loveliness of the world without being a sap, and also lacerate the world for being so goddamn mean—to do those in the same story would be a great aspiration. And I haven’t gotten there yet.”

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