With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke. ↗
And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large. ↗
Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life. ↗