No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly.

I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly.

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything.

What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse