I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

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

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

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.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.