I believe people are much more complicated than they can handle.

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.

I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only reason to write is that somehow it will make something or somebody better.

I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than 24 hours - but I knew I would never get inside there. And 'there' not being America necessarily, but that harmonious mode of living that some people are lucky enough to have in this country.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Sometimes I don't write at all. Someone once asked me, "What do you do when you're not writing?" And I said, "I idle."

There has to be a kind of grassroots push, a movement, as it were, against the inherent isolationism of American capitalism as practiced in the publishing industry. There need to be grants and government support and a few publishers, mainstream and independent, who are not afraid to challenge American readership. We need to build a network of translators, publishers and readers. We hope that our annual anthology might provide an upsurge in interest for European fiction and then, as we publish it every year, become a habit to many readers.