Nothing is easy in writing. I don't think for anyone. But dialogue is probably what comes most naturally to me.

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?

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.

Nothing is easy in writing. I don't think for anyone. But dialogue is probably what comes most naturally to me.

There are books like Darkness at Noon, which from the prose standpoint I don't think is a perfect book. It has flaws. But for its time, it was very politically courageous.

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