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

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

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.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.