I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

We are creatures of story.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.