That's one of the things about comedy - I think it works best when it's contextualized, as opposed to kind of an island of cleverness.

I come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions.

Some days felt longer than other days. Some days felt like two whole days. Unfortunately those days were never weekend days. Our Saturdays and Sundays passed in half the time of a normal workday. In other words, some weeks it felt like we worked ten straight days and had only one day off.

I think if there hadn't been the one passage of the book that mostly abandons the humor, and focuses very intently on one person's struggle with cancer, it wouldn't have been a critical success. So that was a very deliberate decision, to say "Well, if you think it's all fun and games, it's not." So that was my approach: We're going to have as much fun as I can possibly provide, but the serious things that might normally pass by you are not going to be lost.

If someone were plucked from the group and given those responsibilities, they might find themselves growing more aloof, just by virtue of that promotion. Suddenly the group culture excludes you. I saw this in my own working life, and I don't think it's a coincidence - I sensed a kind of loneliness in middle managers especially.

The thing is, for me, as a fiction writer, I don't think there's a finer testament to our lives than this thing that's being spurned - the emotional intelligence, the ethics, the beauty. It's all there. It's all so fully contained in a novel that succeeds. But at the same time, I understand the impulse to put away childish things.

We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.