“George Saunders, do you think you’d be a different writer if you hadn’t had children?”

From a Paris Review interview with author George Saunders:

Do you think you’d be a different writer if you hadn’t had children?

For sure. I’m not sure I would have ever published anything. Before we had our kids, I was a decent person, kind of habitually, but nothing felt morally urgent. Then the kids came, and everything suddenly mattered. The world had a moral charge.

If I love these guys so much, it stands to reason that every other person in the world has somebody who loves them just as much—or they should have someone who loves them as much. The world was full of consequence. That which helps what you love is good, that which hurts it is bad, and even a small hurt is significant.

You see somebody come into the world, tiny and brand new and blameless, and you’re like, That person deserves the best. So, by implication, everybody deserves the best.