I've always been creative verbally, had a flair, my teachers said - wrote great expository essays in elementary school, scribbled little poems, embraced all writing assignments. And all along I read voraciously - first in Russian and then, after we left the USSR, in English, and even Spanish.

Here is where I like to burst in as a writer, to take one strong sensory detail or image and instead of enhancing it or directing attention to it by shouting about it, I simply take it away.

In the desert, the only god is a well.

Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower.

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss. We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends. It is laughter.

The satisfaction of short fiction does not come close to the rich pleasure I get as a writer in the long deep immersion in the same long work and its growing complexity. I suppose you might say I love to wallow in my characters and imaginary worlds. I love to play with the whole necklace, not just one glittering stone.

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.