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

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

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 having an uncompromising ideology eventually forces you out of the norm.

There are books where you can really see the moral question, which I think we answer every day for ourselves, in every interaction we have with people, to a lesser or greater degree.

Here I am: a Russian-speaking Jew living in Canada, and you, an Indian ex-patriot living in San Francisco. All of a sudden we commune in this moment about a much older Russian political dissident.That's the human part of being human: feeling those moments.