I think ex-Soviet or Russian-Jewish women are tougher and that comes through. And if they are more pragmatic than the men, it's because they are obliged to be. They have all the female responsibilities and all the male responsibilities.

When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel. The author is aware that there's a certain amount of information she/he has to provide in order to satisfy the reader, knowing that she/he has set something up that must be paid off, but this payment must be made while maintaining fidelity to the characters.

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

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

Writing a novel, in an unplanned and unpredictable way, makes you engaged; it takes you into yourself, and it becomes something between you and the character for a moment, and then you move back into the structure of the book. I love those moments, because they are completely unbidden.

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.

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