Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.

I used to be treated like an idiot, now I'm treated like an idiot savant.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

You have to be an outsider to write.

To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.

Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.