One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

Families are wonderful institution," he said. "I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that.

If you can sum it up in one word, it's 'shelter,'

If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.

I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

You know, I'm just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don't feel pressured to be otherwise.