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?

It's not for the writer to say whether the thing is successful or not.

People everywhere feel differently at different times of their lives.

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

In my experience of women, women have a greater capacity. Maybe women, even very pragmatic ones, are less guarded about showing emotions.

I think there are differences between men and women. There is more of a softness to women than there is to men, especially when it comes to those more intimate emotions: feeling love, feeling familial connections.

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