I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.

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?

I think every book is a reaction to everything you're written before, and most immediately to the book you wrote just before.

Why are some people highly principled and willing to do anything for their principles, while most of us are not? And I am willing to not only ask, but also answer the question.

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.

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.

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