There are books like Darkness at Noon, which from the prose standpoint I don't think is a perfect book. It has flaws. But for its time, it was very politically courageous.

When writing dialogue, I hear it in both Russian and English, and try to find a language that combines the two.

Why are some people highly principled and willing to do anything for their principles, while most of us are not? And I am willing to not only ask, but also answer the question.

Language is a personality as well. People are different when they speak different languages.

I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.

People everywhere feel differently at different times of their lives.

I think having an uncompromising ideology eventually forces you out of the norm.

We are taught that we can be better than we are. But is there a limit to how good we can be?

In my experience of women, women have a greater capacity. Maybe women, even very pragmatic ones, are less guarded about showing emotions.

We all have some ideological quotient in ourselves. And I think it does guide who we are.

Nothing is easy in writing. I don't think for anyone. But dialogue is probably what comes most naturally to me.

Oh, of course there's a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it's all said and done, there's many a worse thing than a husband.

Why, he was so handsome and brave that no one would ever have suspected that he was bookish!

I've always felt that poetry was particularly erotic, more than prose was... I say that you read poems not with your eyes and not with your ears, but with your mouth. You taste it.

It's better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

The biggest terrorist is George W. Bush.

He's a werewolf! That's why he's been missing classes!

I'm much more interested in making people laugh than getting applause breaks.

Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better.

Fun is to experience things you would not have been able to experience in any other setting.

Joy waits on welcome, not time.