Garret talked to SCI FI Wire last week. The article is here, quotes below:
About The Road:
“No one writes better stories than Cormac McCarthy. I think Cormac had just had his son [when he wrote The Road]. He had his son fairly late in life, and there was a fire on the hill, and he was watching it from his back door, and his mind just started to wander (…) I think he thought because of these feelings of protectiveness for his son, he just started thinking about what he would do. That fire made him think about what if that was the end coming. What if that was a meteor shower that disrupted the whole atmosphere? This story started to develop about this boy who would then grow up never knowing anything but that [bleak] world. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. He started to see the world again, and its magic and mystery through the eyes of this boy, and that’s what the book’s about. “
About his character in Burning Bright:
“A hurricane is coming, and I need some insurance money. Again, I’m a bad father.”
About the science fiction genre in general:
“That’s my whole job. I ask ‘What if?’ all the time. What if I was this guy? What if I was that? I just like good stories. I am a science fiction fan. I have 11 boxes of comic books at home. I read Isaac Asimov when I was in eighth grade, and all these incredible, mind-bending kinds of things. I think it’s an excellent way to think outside the box. The most intelligent people I know are science fiction fans and writers.” [SCI FI Wire]