freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we’re young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we’re standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

All of my books have an element of a man who is in love with somebody and needs them desperately, not just for procreation but for being able to fully unbosom himself. He only feels comfortable discussing things with women. Which is funny, because 80 percent of readers are women!

If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.