Dignify & Improve

© Damon Winter

George Saunders from a NYT interview where he remembers his friend David Foster Wallace:

“The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim. But it’s a mistake, to think of writing programs in terms that are too narrowly careerist. . . . Even for those thousands of young people who don’t get something out there, the process is still a noble one — the process of trying to say something, of working through craft issues and the worldview issues and the ego issues — all of this is character-building, and, God forbid, everything we do should have concrete career results. I’ve seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.”