I have such a rich fantasy life I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and in that respect I liked Bible stories because to me they were very gothic.

My stories are about humans and how they react or fail to react or react stupidly. I'm pointing the finger at us not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.

In all the antique religions mythology takes the place of dogma that is the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. religion whatever else it has done has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.

Think about all the great leaders. Think about Obama. Think about Clinton. Think about Nelson Mandela. Think about all the people that we know who are very successful in business in politics and religion. What are they? They tell purposeful stories. They move people to action by aiming at the heart.

Well religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits.

I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.

I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

Everything Sholom Aleichem talks about in his plays and his short stories is about people family man's relationship with his God the breaking down of tradition.