A book tour is not a good opportunity to let your mind wander. You have to pay attention, remember salespeople's and interviewers' names, succinctly summarize your book in a 'selling' way, and so on.

Siberia is so big, it’s almost more an idea than a place

When the days start to get shorter, I want to be in some nice brick building on the East Coast with the lights glowing in the windows. When the daylight starts changing, I want to be out West.

Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.

People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.

There's an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it's really a heroic place.

Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.

Sometimes travel is merely an opportunity taken when you can.

Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.

I don't have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.

I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do, personally, is the best thing you can do, professionally.

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

I'm not going to lie, I love TV. I watch a ton of it - golf, HGTV, football.

The secret to a great marriage is having a great husband.

Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another lashed, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.

Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair.

The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.-

If you are not growing, you are dying.

I don't mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else's object.