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.

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

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.

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.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

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