Asthmatic Immigrant Learns To Breathe By Writing.

Summer Is A Latvian Chicken. We Make Foolish Choices. We Think We’re Young Again. We Run With Outstretched Arms Toward An Object Of Love And It Pecks Us And Pecks Us Until We’re Standing There Snot-nosed And Teary In The Middle Of Astor Place And The Sun Sets Fire To Our Penguin Shirts And All That Is Left To Do Is Go To Our Air-conditioned Homes And Ponder The Cruelty Of Our Finest Season.

I Write Five, Six Days A Week. The Thing Is Capturing The Voice. I Feel Like I've Been Perfecting One Voice - In Different Iterations, Sure, But The Russian-ness Has Always Been The Undercurrent.

That's What I Always Liked About Science Fiction - You Can Make The World End. Humour Is My Multiple Warhead Delivery System.

The Memoirs I Love Are All Very Intense. If You're Going To Do A Memoir And Protect Yourself, What The Hell's The Point? Just Do Fiction.

Then I Celebrated My Wall Of Books. I Counted The Volumes On My Twenty-foot-long Modernist Bookshelf To Make Sure None Had Been Misplaced Or Used As Kindling By My Subtenant. “you’re My Sacred Ones,” I Told The Books. “no One But Me Still Cares About You. But I’m Going To Keep You With Me Forever. And One Day I’ll Make You Important Again.” I Thought About That Terrible Calumny Of The New Generation: That Books Smell.