"I love George Saunders. I truly love George Saunders. What else need be said?"

"I am a big fan of work in any medium that can take on death — being dead, being a soul — in a new way. It shares something with my favorite aspects of George Saunders in its matter of fact dealings with what might be considered supernatural."

"There is something George Saunders said in an interview that I re-read many times while writing my novel. It’s too long for here but basically: characters don’t have to be articulate to be full human beings. He does this so well and I plan on doing it well"

"The kind of book you finish and walk around in a weird fog for a couple days. The coolest thing to me about George Saunders is his ability to create wildly different characters, and make you empathize with each one. As someone who writes pretty much exclusively from my own perspective, this is a mysterious gift."

"What I really liked about the story [Sea Oak] is that George Saunders was able to take his commentary on society—about the TV shows they were watching and the strip club the narrator is in and the different levels of success and if you’re lowered down you get fired in front of everybody … [laughing] But the whole thing in the end was very moving. Very moving."