I write five, six days a week. The thing is capturing the voice. I feel like I've been perfecting one voice - in different iterations, sure, but the Russian-ness has always been the undercurrent.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

She took my hand and pulled me after her, her shoulders giving off a sweet peppermint concoction that the bodies of young women sometimes produce to make my life more difficult.

I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to support my industry. I think they smell great, too.

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

My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.

She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream.