I'd say that most of life seems to me to be that way, a mixture of the mundane and the mythic, when you're living the life of the mind.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you know you have to hit the ground running.

I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.

Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.

Usually at the core of fiction that has some element of the absurd there tends to be an examination of some societal ills that we should talk about more than we do. And it's funny, of course, so we have that release valve with absurdism. It offers us a safe way to explore difficult subject matter.

I'd say that most of life seems to me to be that way, a mixture of the mundane and the mythic, when you're living the life of the mind.

Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.