How would you interpret this sentence?
“So. Matus the snake has contacted me because a motion-picture option got his attention. That’s what you think?”
“You know what they say. God wants to punish you, he answers your prayers.”
“Artie, I didn’t pray for a motion picture. It makes me uneasy. I don’t like attention.”
“You have a funny way of choosing your profession, in that case.”
“People think that. If a person is famous, he must have wanted to be in the public eye. But to me, writing books is a way to earn a living in my pajamas.”

How would you interpret this sentence in the second passage: God wants to punish you, he answers your prayers?
PS: The first speaker was a novelist and the other was his lawyer.
Thanks! And it’s from The Lacuna.

Question

How would you interpret this sentence?
“So. Matus the snake has contacted me because a motion-picture option got his attention. That’s what you think?”
“You know what they say. God wants to punish you, he answers your prayers.”
“Artie, I didn’t pray for a motion picture. It makes me uneasy. I don’t like attention.”
“You have a funny way of choosing your profession, in that case.”
“People think that. If a person is famous, he must have wanted to be in the public eye. But to me, writing books is a way to earn a living in my pajamas.”

How would you interpret this sentence in the second passage: God wants to punish you, he answers your prayers?
PS: The first speaker was a novelist and the other was his lawyer.
Thanks! And it’s from The Lacuna.

Answer

There's a sarcastic saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it." This sounds very similar and it means that people often wish or pray for things that they might later discover aren't as wonderful as they expected, so if God fulfills your prayer, it may turn out to be more of a punishment than a blessing.
The lawyer is assuming that the novelist wanted his book to be made into a movie, so he's teasing him.