A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

Hard work should be rewarded by good food.

Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

I might not be a good socialist, any more than I'm a good Christian, but I am one.

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.