I would say it was [ifluence] all the Greeks and the Russian classics like [Lev] Tolstoy, [Andrey] Goncharov,[Fedor] Dostoyevsky, [Alexander] Pushkin, and the international classics in Russian translation like Victor Hugo, George Sand, Charlotte Bronte, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain.

Freedom is not a license to act but a license to exercise free choices in any given situation.

A great ancient poet was blind. A great classical composer was deaf. Many of us are dumb. What have we to show for it?

Stick around long enough to be someone's friend. Because true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.

When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.

Short stories are like individual jewel stones on a necklace, wonderful in themselves like standalone gleaming entities of semantic intensity.