Everyone Desires Relationships And Community.

I Believe People Think As A Group More Often Than We Might Realize Or Care To Admit. We Like To Believe That We Act As Individuals And Nothing More, But Time And Again - In Corporations And Business, In Politics And Religion, In Fashion And Culture, And In Friendships And Social Circles - We Think And Do As One.

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.

After I Left College I Thought, Very Naively, That Either You Became Someone Interesting - An Artist - Or You Went Into Academia. If You Ended Up In An Office You Were Dull And Lacking. And I Ended Up In An Office.

I'm Being Provided With Some Emotional Ballast By Giving Me An Intimate Portrait Of One Character In Particular In Contrast To The Collective. I'm Fortunate That I Had Very Sympathetic Readers, But Ordinarily - If A Book Makes You Laugh Too Much, It Shifts From "literature" To "entertainment."