My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

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

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.

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

Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can't do that because you sort of know what's going to happen. Because you're the character.

I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.