"I'm not in bed. I'm not unconscious. It would be amazing if there was a drug that made you feel like total shit for two minutes a day called 'Here's What You're Going to Feel Like on Your Deathbed.'"
"I think it's kind of beautiful that there's a finite nature to all of this,"
"It's like you check into a beautiful hotel, and there's a checkout time, but they don't tell you when it is."
"If you go into that final illness without doing any prep, it's going to be harder, I think. But one thing I've observed is, the people I know who've gotten that final diagnosis? They don't panic. They have moments of panic, but in some way I think we're prepared for it evolutionarily."
George Saunders explores mortality through fiction and personal reflection, finding energy and solace in imagining death rather than dread. At 67, he releases Vigil, a heartrending novel about the last night of an oil company CEO, partly inspired by his fascination with dying and a 2023 cyclone event. Saunders says pondering finality feels like checking into a hotel with an undisclosed checkout time. He worries about the dying process more than any afterlife, noting that friends receiving terminal diagnoses often avoid panic and display evolutionary preparedness. He previously won the Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo.
Read at Esquire
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