My life is pretty ordinary in so many ways. I live in a town called Plainville. I have the life of an average dad. It feels like I have this secret identity as an author, and it's still very surreal to me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My own life has been doubly disconnected, as I've written books under two different names. As an author, your name almost becomes a brand; readers know what to expect.
I love hearing other people's stories, and I freely admit I'm scavenging for material through their conversations, but really, at the same time, I'm living an ordinary life.
I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don't tell you anything about me. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
My life may seem glamorous from the outside but off screen it's as ordinary as anyone else's.
My life as an author has always been about brilliant, odd people.
I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.
It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.
It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me.
I have always lived an ordinary life, and always will. It's who and what has to do with my job that makes it 'unordinary.' I cook, go to the supermarket, pick my children up at school.
I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern... Then I had this really extraordinary, different life than my parents.