It Is Really Irritating To Work With

One Thing That I Discovered About Myself Is I Really Don't Like Traveling. I Feel Like It's A Terrible Personal Failing, But I Was So Satisfied To Arrive At The Conclusion.

I Think Comedy Is So Much Easier To Do On The Page Than It Is In Real Life. When I'm Writing, Comedy Is An Easy Way To Win Over The Reader. You're Automatically More Disposed To Keep Reading, Thinking Maybe, "i'll Get Another Laugh Or Two." I Think It's A Survival Instinct In Me. I Mean, You Don't Want To Lose These Guys Within Five Or Ten Pages. You Want Them To Keep Going. I Think To Some Extent It's A Desperate Measure That I Throw Out There, Because A Novel Isn't A Complete Waste Of Time If It Made You Laugh.

Humor Is A Very Big Part Of Life, And If You Exclude Humor From Your Book, You're Not Capturing A Very Important Part Of Human Experience.

I Think A Fairly Common Behavior Among Fiction Writers Is That They Want To Help. They're Generally Charitable People. They're Interested In The World. They're Curious, They're Empathetic. They Understand Suffering. They Don't Turn Away From That. But What They Do Is Essentially Useless. Except For The Sake Of The Thing Itself.

The People At The Very Top Could Fall By And Grace You With Their Presence And Give You A Little Largesse, And You'd Be "oh, I'm So Beloved." In A Way, It Was Kind Of Like Flattery. The Middle Managers Didn't Quite Have That Cachet, But At The Same Time, They Had To Seem Like They Were Of That Caliber. So There's A Little Bit Of Loneliness At The Heart Of Those With A Little Bit Of Power.