From a 1986 interview to Leonard Michaels for Paris Review, seen in Jacket Copy:
It’s a question of attention span, or maybe toilet training, for those novelists. Maybe they assume that a character is, like themselves, capable of astounding concentration on a subject, unrelieved for years and years. […] I’ve never met anyone, except for people [...]

It doesn’t matter that what you say or what you do makes absolutely no sense, as long as there is a squirrel involved with it.