On that night I was left with only the truth that nothing of our personality survives after death, that in the end all that was Misha Vainberg would evaporate along with the styles and delusions of his epoch, leaving behind not one flutter of his sad heavy brilliance, not one damp spot around which his successors could congregate to appreciate his life and times.

By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.

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.

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

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.

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

Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.