Speaker 1: When you're doing the tough issues, especially involved with mental health.
Speaker 1: If you don't laugh, you're never going to make it through.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Our guest today is Matthew Quick, New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling author of many novels, including The
Speaker 1: Silver Linings Playbook, which was made a New An Oscar
Speaker 1: winning film. His work has been translated into thirty languages,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure this interview will be as well. Matthew,
Speaker 1: or Q as he is often called, has a new
Speaker 1: novel called The Good Luck of Right Now, Eric, let's
Speaker 1: hear the interview. Hi, Matt, Welcome to the show. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. So our podcast is
Speaker 1: based on the parable of two wolves, in which there
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf who
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and love and joy, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like hatred
Speaker 1: and greed and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks,
Speaker 1: and he says, Grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by just asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 1: in your life and in your work. I feel like
Speaker 1: I could talk about that for hours. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's one that I've I've heard before, and I've
Speaker 1: I've thought about deeply. I'm somebody who has struggled with
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression for pretty much my entire life, but
Speaker 1: I only began talking openly about that when I started
Speaker 1: to publish for the first time, and largely because I
Speaker 1: was writing about those things. So I had to kind
Speaker 1: of come out if you will. Um, I'm someone you
Speaker 1: know who writes fiction for a living. So I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in narrative and the stories that we tell ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's a perfect example, the parable
Speaker 1: of the Wolf. UM remind us that we're constantly telling
Speaker 1: ourselves a story about who we are. UM. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a working class neighborhood and I was told
Speaker 1: at the age of sixteen seventeen eighteen that, you know,
Speaker 1: a career in fiction writing was was not necessarily for
Speaker 1: me because they didn't have the pedigree, because the people
Speaker 1: that raised me were not fiction writers. But that was
Speaker 1: a narrative that I didn't choose to believe. You know.
Speaker 1: I tried to feed the other narrative, and it was
Speaker 1: it was it was hard to believe that I could
Speaker 1: transcend the expectations of my community and do something that
Speaker 1: people were not doing at the time, which was writing fiction. UM.
Speaker 1: But it took a while and I kept feeding that
Speaker 1: and feeding that narrative. Now in my life, when um,
Speaker 1: you know, I sit down to write fiction, every every
Speaker 1: new novel, is is a leap of faith. And I
Speaker 1: find myself not only trying to monitor this story that
Speaker 1: I tell myself, but also monitor the stories that other
Speaker 1: people are telling me. I tried to surround myself with
Speaker 1: people who make me feel that I can make good art,
Speaker 1: and the people who make me feel as though I can't,
Speaker 1: or the people who feed the bad wolf. I try
Speaker 1: to keep away from those people, which is hard, um,
Speaker 1: but necessary if you want to do things that um,
Speaker 1: not everybody does, and try to live an examine life exactly.
Speaker 1: And you talked there about the stories that we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves and in your books, one of the things I
Speaker 1: noticed is that the characters tend to uh do I
Speaker 1: don't know if the word I would use in some
Speaker 1: cases is pretending or telling themselves stories that allow them
Speaker 1: to carry on in the face of face of trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's um. That's something that I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in, um, not only as a as a storyteller,
Speaker 1: but also as a human being. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a very religious home. UM. I was raising a Methodist church.
Speaker 1: I no longer it's in any church now, UM. But
Speaker 1: you know story and religion, and you know the tales
Speaker 1: and the mids uh that that we we embrace, I mean,
Speaker 1: tell really do do shape our lives. And so as
Speaker 1: a re teller with my characters, I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: not only the myths and the stories that they inherit,
Speaker 1: but also the ones that they invent for themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: And I find myself doing this both as a novelist
Speaker 1: and as a human being as well. Um. The story
Speaker 1: and the narrative that I buy into evolves and it
Speaker 1: changes as you progress. When I was sixteen, I thought, Um,
Speaker 1: you know that I was a kid from a blue
Speaker 1: collar neighborhood that would probably never get to be a novelist.
Speaker 1: That was That was a story that I was told. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you know a published novelist who obviously buys into a
Speaker 1: very different narrative. So it's it's involved. So your latest
Speaker 1: book is called The Good Luck of right Now, and
Speaker 1: in a in a quick summary for the readers, it's
Speaker 1: a book about a main character named Bartholomew, who is
Speaker 1: a little bit off and he's lived his entire life
Speaker 1: with his mother. He's he's he's a he's a grown man.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how old he is, uh, maybe in
Speaker 1: his forties and late thirties and his mother. Finally, his
Speaker 1: mother dies and he's sort of confronted with what does
Speaker 1: he do with his life now? And the framework that
Speaker 1: you set the book up in is he is writing
Speaker 1: letters to Richard Gear, who is his mother's favorite actor,
Speaker 1: and he actually believes at points that Richard Gear is
Speaker 1: inspiring him and helping him. And that's sort of the
Speaker 1: pretending that that goes on. One of the things that
Speaker 1: the title of the book, The Good Look of Right Now,
Speaker 1: is based on a philosophy that Bartholomew's mother had. Could
Speaker 1: you tell us more about that? Yeah, it's really about
Speaker 1: about balance. Um. She comes up with this idea that
Speaker 1: when things happened to them that are are tragic are bad,
Speaker 1: that they should believe that other good things are happening
Speaker 1: to other people around the world. Uh, simultaneously, it's the
Speaker 1: equal at out and so she almost celebrates when something
Speaker 1: bad or tragic happens to them because she believes that
Speaker 1: in order for them to be bad and something good
Speaker 1: must be happening elsewhere, and vice versa. When something good
Speaker 1: happened to them, she feels a little bit of shame
Speaker 1: or she worries that something bad is happening to someone else.
Speaker 1: And the concept of balances is something that um, I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about because I was in the
Speaker 1: process of transitioning from UM, a relatively unknown writer, to
Speaker 1: a writer who was succeeding UM beyond most people's expectations.
Speaker 1: And during the time of the sivin Landings playbook being
Speaker 1: adapted into a film, UM, I I was going through
Speaker 1: this phase where I was accomplishing things that many of
Speaker 1: my mentors had not accomplished. And I realized that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Oscars is a perfect example. You know, only certain
Speaker 1: movies get selected and only certain people win, and that
Speaker 1: means that other people aren't selected, and other people will lose.
Speaker 1: And only certain books get adapted into into films, and
Speaker 1: that means that others will not UM. And so this
Speaker 1: whole idea of you know, balancing UM. You know, the
Speaker 1: the lack of success I had in my life for
Speaker 1: a long time with this sudden success that I was
Speaker 1: being confronted with made me think deeply about about these things.
Speaker 1: And you know, for Bartholomew's mother, it's it's really also
Speaker 1: a survival mechanism as well. Like she's someone who is
Speaker 1: constantly experiencing UM tragedy and negativity and a lot of
Speaker 1: bad things, and so in order for her to cope
Speaker 1: in order for her to get her son through these
Speaker 1: really difficult situations. She comes up with this philosophy that
Speaker 1: they can both embrace in order to to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the horrific things that are going
Speaker 1: on in their lives. And a couple of times throughout
Speaker 1: the narrative, Bartholomew muses that it might not even matter
Speaker 1: if it's true or not, but the story helps. That
Speaker 1: gets back to the idea of the to some degree,
Speaker 1: we are telling our stories really about anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of the narrative that goes on in my head
Speaker 1: and most people I know is is a is a
Speaker 1: version of some story, and and about being conscious about
Speaker 1: choosing a story that's actually that actually serves us well
Speaker 1: versus plenty of stories that don't service well. And I'll
Speaker 1: use that to to transition into Bartholom. You has a
Speaker 1: um he calls it the angry little man in his
Speaker 1: stomach who when when something is happening, the angry little
Speaker 1: man tends to do two things. One is, he yells
Speaker 1: at him like moron, retard miserable failure. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, you have many different ways of describing how
Speaker 1: he's kicking his internal organs or or digging his uh
Speaker 1: you know, his claws into his stomach. And when I
Speaker 1: was reading that, I was thinking a little bit about
Speaker 1: that sounds like a perfect description of the bad wolf
Speaker 1: for some of us. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a powerful realization in my twenties where I finally
Speaker 1: realized that my thoughts could make me physically ill, um
Speaker 1: to the point where it was completely debilitating. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the things that I was thinking about could make me
Speaker 1: feel nauseous or you know, keep me from being able
Speaker 1: to perform or uh, you know, send me into a
Speaker 1: panic attack, just because I was having certain thoughts. And
Speaker 1: it's really powerful to think that. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: narrative in our head can literally affect not only our
Speaker 1: mental health, but also our physical health as well. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just by the thoughts that we're thinking. It's
Speaker 1: really really powerful concept, you know. And to to get
Speaker 1: back to the idea of the bad wolf um inside
Speaker 1: of us, you know, Bartholomy and my character, it could
Speaker 1: very easily be synonymous, you know, the angry man or
Speaker 1: the bad wolf. It's this thing that's constantly um telling
Speaker 1: him that he's not good enough. It's affecting his mental health,
Speaker 1: it's affecting his physics, go health, and he realizes that
Speaker 1: it's it's the force of the narrative that that he
Speaker 1: has to overcome, that he has to beat Um, that
Speaker 1: he has to in some ways appease as well UM,
Speaker 1: and he does battle daily with it. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: part in the book where you talk about um synchronicity.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that that Bartholomy is wrestling
Speaker 1: with is the idea of synchronicity, also called unus mundus,
Speaker 1: which is based on a theory that Young had. Can
Speaker 1: you expound upon that one? You know, the idea that
Speaker 1: Bartholomew latches onto is this idea that um things happen.
Speaker 1: You know, two events can be related not not by
Speaker 1: their their cause, but by their meaning to a certain individual,
Speaker 1: which of course is what Young proposed. And so Bartholomy
Speaker 1: becomes obsessed for for looking for these bits of synchronicity,
Speaker 1: almost as if to like bread crow to lead him
Speaker 1: to something. And of course the first bit that he
Speaker 1: finds is is this letter from Richard Gear at this
Speaker 1: time when he needs a mentor, and so you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of graphs a narrative onto that and and
Speaker 1: so you know, for me, um, you know, again it
Speaker 1: gets back to the stories that we tell ourselves. And
Speaker 1: I do believe that there are rhythms to the universe,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, there are patterns that emerge often in hindsight.
Speaker 1: And I often think about stories. And when I was
Speaker 1: in the m f A program, one of my advisors,
Speaker 1: Paul Selik, he said that, um, you know, a story
Speaker 1: should make sense in retrospect, so the readers should be
Speaker 1: going through and then you have that aha moment and
Speaker 1: you look back and you see all the signs that
Speaker 1: we're leading to that inevitable conclusion. And I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that's that's really what Bartholomy is
Speaker 1: trying to do. He's trying to to see the signs
Speaker 1: as they're they're not in retrospect and try to figure
Speaker 1: out his life. And I think to some extent, we
Speaker 1: all do that, whether we buy into the concept of
Speaker 1: synchronicity or coincidence or signs. Um, you know, we're all
Speaker 1: looking for, you know, the rhythm to our lives that
Speaker 1: give us meeting and help us make sense of all
Speaker 1: of these you know, chaotic things that are happening to us.
Speaker 1: I think that's largely what I do as a fiction writer.
Speaker 1: You know, I think fiction writing is a form of therapy.
Speaker 1: For me. I always say, I take all of the
Speaker 1: chaos in my chest in my mind, and I try
Speaker 1: to make order on the page. And I think that's
Speaker 1: exactly what my characters are doing as well. We had
Speaker 1: a conversation a couple of weeks ago with with a
Speaker 1: woman who wrote a book about the self help industry,
Speaker 1: and we were talking back and forth a little bit
Speaker 1: about the idea of positive thinking and when does that
Speaker 1: crossover into denial? And I think that's really interesting in
Speaker 1: in what we're talking about where you've got, uh, whether
Speaker 1: it's in our own lives or characters lives, where we're
Speaker 1: telling ourselves a story, and yet at some points that
Speaker 1: that crosses over into not addressing or dealing with things
Speaker 1: that need to be need to be dealt with. Do
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on that? I do. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a fine line, um. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that if you ask several different people where that
Speaker 1: line is, they're all gonna tell you a different answer. UM.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can answer the best with an anecdote. When
Speaker 1: I was UM in the m f A program. I
Speaker 1: had quit a senior teaching position and I had moved
Speaker 1: in with my in laws to be a you know,
Speaker 1: full time fiction writer. And for you know, sow and
Speaker 1: a half years, I was an unpaid fiction fiction writer,
Speaker 1: not making any money, living with my in laws, and
Speaker 1: you know, many people in my family, UM, and my
Speaker 1: friends were convinced that I had made this huge mistake,
Speaker 1: that I was completely delusional, that I was irrational, and
Speaker 1: that at the age of thirty three, I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: you know, sitting alone in a basement with fictional characters
Speaker 1: trying to pretend that I was some type of artist. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were convinced that I was wrong. And one day
Speaker 1: I went for a run and I was feeling completely dejected. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, when you live in America and you're a man,
Speaker 1: and you're thirty years old, and you tell people that
Speaker 1: you are an artist and that you are a full
Speaker 1: time fiction writer and you're not making any money, people
Speaker 1: make you feel as though you're committing a crime. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's largely how the people in my
Speaker 1: life made me feel. That I was irresponsible, illogical, selfish, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in denial, and so I was on this run,
Speaker 1: and I was really that worried about my future. My
Speaker 1: bank account was at zero. Um, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was going to do next. I had
Speaker 1: kind of worn out my welcome with my in laws,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to live with them forever. And
Speaker 1: so while I was running, I was thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the possibility of giving up my dream of being a
Speaker 1: fiction writer. And I was running and running and running,
Speaker 1: and I looked up into the sky and it was
Speaker 1: this gray winter day and there was this beautiful cloud
Speaker 1: and it was illuminated by the sun that was behind it,
Speaker 1: and so it was kind of, uh, you know, there
Speaker 1: was a silver lining around it, and it was absolutely
Speaker 1: breathtakingly gorgeous, to the point where I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: maybe it's an omen or a sign um that I'm
Speaker 1: going to make it as a fiction writer, that I
Speaker 1: should keep going. And immediately I started to yell at
Speaker 1: myself in my head. Maybe the bad wolf was speaking,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and you know, that voice said, that's delusional,
Speaker 1: that's silly, that's magical, thinking, like you can't believe that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't believe that because you saw a beautiful,
Speaker 1: you know cloud you know lined in silver that that
Speaker 1: that means anything. You know, that's completely irrational. And then
Speaker 1: the Good Wolf stepped in and said, well, what if
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to believe it just so it gives
Speaker 1: you enough fuel to keep going. You know, you've been
Speaker 1: working every day. You know, you've been putting a lot
Speaker 1: of time and effort into this. Your stories are improving,
Speaker 1: You've been published in some small literary journals. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of positives here. You've been working towards an m
Speaker 1: f A. The Good Wolf stepped in and I started
Speaker 1: thinking about it. You know, what if I pretended that
Speaker 1: this this this sign meant something and it just gave
Speaker 1: me the fuel of the courage to keep fighting. And
Speaker 1: then I had a moment as I was running, and
Speaker 1: I said, what if I had a character who believed that?
Speaker 1: And that's where I got the idea for pat People's
Speaker 1: in the Silver Lightnings playbook. And I went home that
Speaker 1: night and I started writing, and um, you know, nobody
Speaker 1: was paying attention at that time, but the Good Wolf
Speaker 1: was winning, and you know, I was saying, you know, look,
Speaker 1: you know this is something you have an idea here.
Speaker 1: You've been working hard, You've been honing your talents see
Speaker 1: this through And I did, and I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Silver Linings Playbook, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: published and it was made into a movie. And a
Speaker 1: few years later I was sitting a fiascars um. You know,
Speaker 1: that was born at a moment where if I had
Speaker 1: told people like, hey, I got this idea why I
Speaker 1: was running because I saw, you know, a silver lining
Speaker 1: in the sky, you know, people would have thought that
Speaker 1: was wildly irrational. But that's exactly what happened, and that
Speaker 1: led to a lot of good things for me. And
Speaker 1: so it's hard because when you talk about the arts,
Speaker 1: um and you talk about pretending, and you talk about
Speaker 1: you know, positive thinking, and what is dangerously um you know, irrational?
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I think it's really hard to to
Speaker 1: answer that because any artists before they're making money seems
Speaker 1: like they're doing something wildly irrational and silly. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, society is always going to tell you that,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a dreamer, you know that it's not
Speaker 1: worth doing until until you make money, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a horrible a way too to
Speaker 1: qualify something, to to give something validity. But unfortunately in America.
Speaker 1: Before you make money as a fiction writer and artist,
Speaker 1: you know, people are always going to tell you that
Speaker 1: you're delusional. Yeah, I think what's interesting about that And
Speaker 1: I've I've I've been thinking a lot about this. When
Speaker 1: where is that line? And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've I've noticed is that there's a line. It seems
Speaker 1: to be if people are really doing the work, really
Speaker 1: engaged in it, really going after it. That's a that
Speaker 1: seems to me to be an indicator versus thinking about
Speaker 1: and pretending that we're going to be something without actually
Speaker 1: putting the effort in. And it's clear that you you
Speaker 1: put that work in. Yeah, and I think that that is. Um,
Speaker 1: It's definitely true whether we're talking about art or mental
Speaker 1: health or relationships. Um. You know, you've got to do
Speaker 1: the work, you know. And I worked extremely hard on
Speaker 1: my fiction, and you know, I like to think that
Speaker 1: I work extremely hard on you know, myself as well,
Speaker 1: my mental health, my relationships with people. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: still a constant battle, you know. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to diminish the fact that I often, you know, felt
Speaker 1: so The Bad Wolf, if you will, was winning a lot,
Speaker 1: and there were times that I get very close to
Speaker 1: quitting before Silver Linings took off. And you know, there
Speaker 1: have been times in life that I've I've come close
Speaker 1: to quitting, you know, on myself as well. And I
Speaker 1: would say that for most of my life, I've felt
Speaker 1: as though most people in society, um, we're feeling the
Speaker 1: bad wolf. And and that's troublesome for me because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to be an artist oftentimes means walking alone.
Speaker 1: It means flying in the face of convention. It means
Speaker 1: doing what other people think is irrational or silly, and
Speaker 1: you know, finding truths before others necessarily believe that they're
Speaker 1: they're true. It means believe wildly, um, and doing things
Speaker 1: that oftentimes other people, um just don't get. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's a tough line to walk because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you always want to to be to be rational as well.
Speaker 1: You don't every want to slide into into delusion. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I really enjoyed about your work is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's both humorous and really touching and and and poignant
Speaker 1: at the same time. And I read somewhere that you said, um,
Speaker 1: humor has saved you a million times. And I think
Speaker 1: the role of I've said before that levity is an
Speaker 1: unappreciated virtue. Can you tell us more about the role
Speaker 1: of humor in in feeding your good wolf? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, I often tell a story about the the
Speaker 1: first year I was working out of college, I worked
Speaker 1: with teenagers diagnosed with severe autism in a classroom UM,
Speaker 1: doing job training and behavior therapy. And these were kids
Speaker 1: that were often violent, non verbal. Um. When we took
Speaker 1: them to the pizza hut, we could clear out the
Speaker 1: pizza hut in about five minutes. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: are great kids, and I love them. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that happened was the turnover was quite high
Speaker 1: because the pay was low and the work was really hard,
Speaker 1: and so we'd get new faculty and all the time,
Speaker 1: and on the first day when we had a new
Speaker 1: person working with our kids, we'd always laughed. We'd always
Speaker 1: watched to see if they would laugh, not laugh at
Speaker 1: the kids, um, but at the absurdity of some of
Speaker 1: the situations that we were in, laughing a good way
Speaker 1: UM with everybody. And if they laughed, we knew that
Speaker 1: they would come back the next day. If they didn't
Speaker 1: laugh once throughout the day, we would never see them again.
Speaker 1: And you know was at that point that I realized
Speaker 1: that when you're dealing with you know, tough issues, especially
Speaker 1: involved with mental health, that if you don't laugh, you're
Speaker 1: never gonna make it through. And you know, for me, um,
Speaker 1: I tell stories that are often you know, tragic and difficult,
Speaker 1: and I try to shine a light on on things
Speaker 1: that you know, society doesn't always necessarily want to look at.
Speaker 1: And so I think the humor is a really great
Speaker 1: tool for letting people know that it's okay to to
Speaker 1: have human feelings, to feel as though, um, you know,
Speaker 1: things are absurd at times, but it's still okay, like
Speaker 1: we can still laugh when we can get through this.
Speaker 1: And so when I'm reading, when I'm writing, um, I
Speaker 1: know when I start to laugh, uh, you know, through
Speaker 1: the writing of the manuscript, laugh with my characters, laugh
Speaker 1: at the absurdity of their situations that I'm going to
Speaker 1: finish the manuscript. What were some of your favorite without
Speaker 1: giving any any plot away, what were some of your
Speaker 1: favorite funny moments in the Good Luck of Right now.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to uh to to talk about the
Speaker 1: jokes without spoiling them from for people. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I can think of very specific moments in the book.
Speaker 1: But again I don't want to give spoilers x. I
Speaker 1: will say that the character of Max was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to write, and again I'm trying to speak
Speaker 1: without spoilers, but he was just so so much fun
Speaker 1: to inhabit because it was just so uninhibited, and he
Speaker 1: was so honest and um and in so many ways
Speaker 1: he was just so beautifully absurd. But through all of that,
Speaker 1: he was just really kind and like he really cared
Speaker 1: about people, and he really cared about um animals, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very beautiful soul within him. But
Speaker 1: hilarious at the same time, you know, because he spoke
Speaker 1: his mind and he would say the things that he
Speaker 1: wanted to say. UM. So again I'm talking in a
Speaker 1: vague way just to not to give spoilers. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually didn't read the book. I listened to it a
Speaker 1: version of it on book, a book on tape, and
Speaker 1: the guy who did Max did a great Max. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just I was laughing the whole time. I'd agree
Speaker 1: to I think he was. He was definitely the one
Speaker 1: that I got the most laughs out of. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of humor, you know, it's it's funny because UM,
Speaker 1: people have wildly different reactions to my books. I remember
Speaker 1: with Silver Linings, one of the first big public moments
Speaker 1: was that received an honorable mention for the Pen Hemmingway Award.
Speaker 1: You know, I got to meet Hemingway Son. It was
Speaker 1: is very shanky affair in Boston. I remember speaking with
Speaker 1: a very famous author um and who had read the
Speaker 1: book in He said to me, your book is hilarious.
Speaker 1: You know, the Silver Linings play book was so funny.
Speaker 1: I laughed all the way through and I just couldn't
Speaker 1: stop laughing. And then I turned around and there was
Speaker 1: another person associated with the Penn Hemmingway and they said
Speaker 1: to me, you know, I love Silver Linings, but it
Speaker 1: was just so sad, like I cried all the way
Speaker 1: through it. And it was literally I just you know,
Speaker 1: within thirty seconds, you know, complete opposite reaction to the
Speaker 1: book from two people who claimed to love it. And
Speaker 1: I often think that our response to to life, but
Speaker 1: particularly issues about mental health, UM really are telling you
Speaker 1: know about our attitudes about it as well. And you
Speaker 1: know they say that, you know, somebody's response to books
Speaker 1: is a lot more about them than the author, And
Speaker 1: I think that that's generally true. But I love it
Speaker 1: when I hear from people like yourself who who laugh
Speaker 1: at my jokes, because it makes me feel less alone
Speaker 1: and makes you feel a little bit more normal. So
Speaker 1: thank you. Well, I got both, right, I got I
Speaker 1: got both the laughter and and the sadness, which I
Speaker 1: think you said, if you're not both laughing and crying
Speaker 1: while you're writing it at points, you don't feel like
Speaker 1: you have it. And I think that's the that's the
Speaker 1: gift of certain authors of the ability to combine those
Speaker 1: two things, because a funny book is one thing and
Speaker 1: a sad book is another thing, but one that hits
Speaker 1: both those things. One of my favorite writers is John Irving,
Speaker 1: and he does a really good job of that. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for that, embarrassing, I appreciate that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you know, like comedy is in some ways, it's
Speaker 1: very close to tragedy. Um. You know, if if we
Speaker 1: if we think about the things that that we laugh at,
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know, for example, why do we
Speaker 1: laugh when you know, somebody's in the movie and they
Speaker 1: trip and fall down? You know, if there's funny music
Speaker 1: behind it, why do we laugh when somebody falls? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I think it's because in many ways it's unexpected.
Speaker 1: We laugh at what we don't we don't really understand,
Speaker 1: or what we might be a little bit afraid of.
Speaker 1: And and so I think it's interesting to see how
Speaker 1: those two, you know, comedy and tragedy are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of ying and yang speaking of fine lines, that
Speaker 1: line between sort of laughing at somebody and laughing with somebody.
Speaker 1: You know, if somebody falls down, it's it's funny. I
Speaker 1: always find the the test to be if I fall down,
Speaker 1: do I still think it's funny? Which I usually do.
Speaker 1: I usually think it's pretty funny. So can we laugh
Speaker 1: at ourselves? That's that's it, you know. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's that's really important. My wife
Speaker 1: is always saying to me, we should we should laugh more,
Speaker 1: and we laugh all the time, but I do think
Speaker 1: we should laugh more. You know. It's it's good medicine.
Speaker 1: You've addressed the mental health and depression a lot. Are
Speaker 1: there any things you're willing to share in more detail
Speaker 1: about what that was like for you and how you've
Speaker 1: gotten through that? Yeah? You know, Um, it's funny. In
Speaker 1: super Lightnings playbook the movie, Um David wrote a line
Speaker 1: it's not my line. It wasn't in the book, But
Speaker 1: Bradley Cooper talks about white knuckling it like he says,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been white knuckling it for a
Speaker 1: long time. And Um, when I was teaching in my twenties, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a very functional um person who deals with
Speaker 1: depression anxiety. I'm very good at putting on a mask.
Speaker 1: Um when I when I talk about my depression now,
Speaker 1: from those days, my students will say, there's no way
Speaker 1: you like, you were so upbeat at school like you were.
Speaker 1: You were the guy giving us the big speech before
Speaker 1: you know, the soccer match of the basketball game. You're
Speaker 1: so positive in school, and you know that was definitely
Speaker 1: one one part of it. But I would come home
Speaker 1: exhausted and completely depleted, and um, you know I was
Speaker 1: privately dealing with a lot of anxiety. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course, when you're hiding it all the time, it
Speaker 1: only makes it worse. And when you're not talking about
Speaker 1: it it makes it worse as well. And I had
Speaker 1: somewhat of a breakdown in my late twenties. Um, you
Speaker 1: know I was probably drinking too much at night. Um,
Speaker 1: I was definitely drinking too much at night. It was
Speaker 1: an alcoholic, but I was self medicating, um, you know,
Speaker 1: more than I probably should have been. And uh again,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. People didn't
Speaker 1: talk about mental health, you know. Um, people weren't open
Speaker 1: about at it. And what was worse was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the model hood for man the model for manhood that I,
Speaker 1: you know, received was, you know, you just keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut and tough it out. You know, you you
Speaker 1: bully your way through. And and I try to do
Speaker 1: that for a long time. But you know, I realized
Speaker 1: that I had breaking points. And I also realized that, um,
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who can appear to be an extrovert when
Speaker 1: I need to be, but my true nature is that
Speaker 1: of an introvert. And I need time alone. Um, I
Speaker 1: need time to think. I need time to recharge my batteries. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't like to make decisions quickly. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: picking the career choice abou high school English teacher, where
Speaker 1: I love doing that work and I felt as though
Speaker 1: I was very good at it was was probably the
Speaker 1: worst career choice I could have made. From my my
Speaker 1: own mental health. Now, writing fiction full time Um. You
Speaker 1: know when when I had that mental breakdown, you know,
Speaker 1: in my late thirties, my wife kind of sat me
Speaker 1: down and said, you know, we can't go on like this.
Speaker 1: You've you've got to change, and you know I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't have you coming home, you know, depressed and
Speaker 1: anxious all the time. You've got to do something to
Speaker 1: help your mental health. And you know, she gave me
Speaker 1: that talk, like, if you could do anything in the world,
Speaker 1: what would you do, you know, if you could get
Speaker 1: up tomorrow and do anything, and what would make you happy?
Speaker 1: And I said I would write fiction, and she said
Speaker 1: we should and I said, well, I can't because we
Speaker 1: have a mortgage and I have tenure, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have health insurance, and you know, I give a
Speaker 1: talk about this now, and I talked about how I
Speaker 1: used to polish the bars of my prison. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: tenure was a bar. You know, it's a good thing
Speaker 1: to have tenure, but it was also you know, it
Speaker 1: kept me trapped in the cage. And you know, health
Speaker 1: insurance and a pension and you know, having a house
Speaker 1: and you know, all of these things that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to want, Um made me feel incredibly trapped. And my
Speaker 1: wife and I got to this point where, um, we
Speaker 1: just realized that we weren't living the life, the lives
Speaker 1: that we had imagined. You know. We met when she
Speaker 1: was seventeen, that was nineteen, and we wanted to make art,
Speaker 1: we wanted to write, you know, that's what we wanted
Speaker 1: to do. And somehow we woke up ten years later, um,
Speaker 1: you know, being these people that we really did not
Speaker 1: want to be, UM, lives that we had not imagined
Speaker 1: for ourselves. And and so my wife, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the credit goes to her, you know, she said, we
Speaker 1: can do this, we can change and we we took
Speaker 1: a road trip in Ireland where um, I was reading
Speaker 1: a lot of books on Buddhism, and you know, for
Speaker 1: me at the time, that was that was a step
Speaker 1: out of my comfort zone. Um again being raised like
Speaker 1: very Protestant, you know, exploring other views of the world,
Speaker 1: and we were drinking in Irish clubs and you know,
Speaker 1: we're walking through this gorgeous countryside during the day and
Speaker 1: my wife said to me, she's like, you're happy, Like
Speaker 1: you're so happy on this trip, Like wouldn't you like
Speaker 1: to be happy all the time? You know? And I
Speaker 1: really thought that that was an impossibility, that I couldn't
Speaker 1: do the things that I wanted to do. That you know,
Speaker 1: that was for other people. Um, but my wife, she
Speaker 1: just kept saying, you know, if you want to do this,
Speaker 1: you should do it. And and she she really kind
Speaker 1: of gave me the ultimatum of you know, either we're
Speaker 1: gonna change our lives or you know, we can't go
Speaker 1: on like this anymore. And and so I didn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't easy. Um, when I quit my tenure teaching position,
Speaker 1: I was terrified. Um My father is a very pragmatic banker,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, telling him I wanted to write
Speaker 1: fiction full time and leaving a steady paycheck just did
Speaker 1: not compute. And he's a huge fan now, like he
Speaker 1: gives my work to all of his customers, and he's
Speaker 1: always coming out to my events and he's been really supportive.
Speaker 1: But at first, UM, he called me an idiot. You know,
Speaker 1: he's he was furious. You know, he said he wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna pay for my health insurance, He would not pay
Speaker 1: for my dental. What was I going to do in
Speaker 1: three years when I found out I wasn't a fiction
Speaker 1: writer and I was unemployable because I had this huge
Speaker 1: gap on my CV, you know, just really fear based logic,
Speaker 1: and it worked because it's scared the hell out of me. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, but I always say, you know people now
Speaker 1: that will say to me, you know, like you you
Speaker 1: were so brave, like leaving you know, your tenured position
Speaker 1: and doing what you did, like taking this giant leap
Speaker 1: of faith, and I would say, I wasn't brave. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just a last ditch effort to save myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that I would be here
Speaker 1: if I if I didn't do the things that I
Speaker 1: needed to do to feel mentally well. And so you
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of sacrifices, you know, living with
Speaker 1: my in laws, and they were wonderful people, but it
Speaker 1: was it was very humbling to do that. In my
Speaker 1: early thirties. You know, my my best friend was in
Speaker 1: the process of you know, building a very well respected
Speaker 1: spinal implant company and experiencing wild success. And you know,
Speaker 1: my friends were climbing the ladders of their jobs and
Speaker 1: buying bigger houses and having babies, and you know, I
Speaker 1: felt very small, you know, as I sat typing away
Speaker 1: in a basement. You know, believing that I was going
Speaker 1: to be a fiction writer sometime. But you know, again,
Speaker 1: like there was that that good wolf, and you know,
Speaker 1: I kept trying to feed it and kept trying to believe,
Speaker 1: um that I could do the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. And We're gonna provide me with a better life.
Speaker 1: And and now I write fiction full time, you know.
Speaker 1: So you know, part of the year, I travel and
Speaker 1: promote my books and I meet wonderful people, which is great, um.
Speaker 1: But for the other part of the year, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much by myself with my wife and um. You know,
Speaker 1: we live by the water now, and you know, I
Speaker 1: get up when I want to and I write fiction,
Speaker 1: and I can be alone and I can take time
Speaker 1: to do things that make me feel healthy. You know,
Speaker 1: today my wife and I took an hour walk on
Speaker 1: the beach at the dog. Um. You know, I worked
Speaker 1: hard to you know, I didn't interview, you know, for
Speaker 1: people in the Philippines, and you know, I worked on
Speaker 1: my fiction. But it's at my pace, and it's it's
Speaker 1: in an environment that makes me feel mentally well. I
Speaker 1: had to fight to get here, had to fight really hard,
Speaker 1: um to get here. Both um, you know, in the
Speaker 1: arena of publishing, but also you know in my mind
Speaker 1: as well, UM, to stop believing that I couldn't do
Speaker 1: all these things that I wanted to do, and and
Speaker 1: really trusting that, um, you know, the feelings that I had,
Speaker 1: and the belief that I needed to do what would
Speaker 1: give me the best life and make me feel most mentally, Well,
Speaker 1: um was right, and then I should trust my instincts, um,
Speaker 1: you know, which was which was really hard. Of course,
Speaker 1: after you go to the oscars, everybody's on board, you know,
Speaker 1: and people come around and it's it's nice to have
Speaker 1: that luxury now. But um, you know, for a long time,
Speaker 1: I didn't have too many cheerleaders, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think in some ways it's a write of passage for
Speaker 1: every artist and maybe for every human being. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really that's a really great story, and that that
Speaker 1: ended the way, didn't I think you may not have
Speaker 1: had a lot of cheerleaders, but it sounded like you
Speaker 1: had one of the most important ones, which is your wife.
Speaker 1: So that makes a big difference. Yeah, I do, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel, um, wildly blessed and very very lucky, um
Speaker 1: to have my wife. You know, these when people ask
Speaker 1: me and a lot of people say, like, how do
Speaker 1: I become a fiction writer? You know, how to become
Speaker 1: a published novelist. And one of the first things I'll
Speaker 1: say is make sure you choose the right life partner,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think that's probably true of you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to do in life. But I often
Speaker 1: think about, you know, meeting Alicia when we're in our
Speaker 1: late teens, and just how how lucky, you know, we
Speaker 1: were to to come across each other. There's a long
Speaker 1: story about that that I'd sell on book tour, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel very grateful for that. But we've
Speaker 1: done the work too, I should say, you know, we
Speaker 1: work really hard to to not only um be the
Speaker 1: best people that we can be, but also we work
Speaker 1: hard on our relationship too. Excellent. Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: a great way to to wrap up. Thanks very much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Like I said, I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the good Luck of Right Now. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to reading some of the other ones. Any idea. I
Speaker 1: know that the good luck of right now is in
Speaker 1: casting any idea when it might be a movie that
Speaker 1: people can see. Well, I met with um Dayton and Farris,
Speaker 1: who directed Little Miss Sunshine about a month ago in
Speaker 1: l A. And they're very excited about the project and
Speaker 1: there's all types of wonderful rumors and I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to talk about right now, but we're hoping that they
Speaker 1: start filming relatively soon. So Fingers Crossed also have another
Speaker 1: book coming out next year called Love May Fail Um,
Speaker 1: which is also being made into a film as well. Well.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on all your success and thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: on the show. Hey, it was my pleasure. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having us, and thanks for putting this good
Speaker 1: message out into the world. It's it's really important and
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful thing. Thank you, Bye bye, all right,
Speaker 1: take care, matt Yeah. You can learn more about Matthew
Speaker 1: Quick and this podcast in our show notes at when
Speaker 1: You Feed dot Net slash q