The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.

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

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.

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

The greatest books in Russian literature are satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, for example, is a very over-the-top satire about life in Russia. I think it's the thing we do best.

I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.