Found in the back of George Saunders’ Tenth of December, which has been blowing me away lately.

A writer’s flaws are what he has to work with. To get any forward momentum, I have to make stories that have drama, which for me often means putting some overt threat in there. And I’m not subtle. To make “threat” and thereby “drama” I will just – you know – create a kindergarten teacher and then introduce an approaching Mongol horde. In the midst of a crisis is where we get the true measure of a character, and thus some new feeling about human tendency.