I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

The most beautiful women in the world were African.

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.

I have another Russian idea, too, with a place and a period, so I guess I have enough to keep me busy for quite some time, especially considering that I'm such a slow writer.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

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

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

Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out.

Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.

I love my old paintings as postulates as fresh starting points but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto.

When the soul is set on fire, great things manifest.

The habit of thinking prevents us at times from experiencing reality, immunises us against it, makes it seem no more than any other thought.

A question asked in earnest, deserves an earnest answer.

Photographers, like kids, should be seen and not heard.

There are no warning signs on the trampoline. The warning is the trampoline.

The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious.

You can have, you can be, you can do whatever you want to do once you make the decision, so that would be my greatest piece of advice.

Only when you are aware of the uniqueness of everyones individual body will you begin to have a sense of your own self-worth.

The Gospel teaches us what Jesus' kingdom requires of us... Reminds us that closeness and tenderness are the rules of life.