Most people will reach a point where, whatever their ideology, they will relent, or conform, and that keeps them kind of in the general mass of people. And for those who find that they can't, all of sudden they leave the general mass, they find that they become exceptions, and exceptional, and often this makes them public.

When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel.

There are different types of readers. People draw lines at which three things intersect: the character, the author, and the reader.

Some is, I think, the personal in any act of writing. You find yourself caught up: you start a sentence, and it becomes revelatory, not just of the character, but of you as well.

When writing dialogue, I hear it in both Russian and English, and try to find a language that combines the two.

Maybe the most provocative thing one can do - and I'm not the first one to do it - is to ask the moral and philosophical question: why are some people better than others? Why are some people more moral than others?

Language is a personality as well. People are different when they speak different languages.