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.

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.

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.

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

Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire.

Don’t try, be happy.

Go to church and get directions so you won’t get lost.

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.

Call no day happy 'til it is done; call no man happy til he is dead.

Is Billy Idol just doing a bad Elvis pout, or was he born that way?

If you date a musician, you're never, ever really gonna be first either. You're gonna be right behind the music and maybe right close.

What does it mean with regard to tactics, this fact that the proletariat of Western Europe stands all alone: that it has no prospect of any help whatsoever from any other class?

I want my children to live in the country, to be a part of nature.

The finest day i ever had was when tomorrow never came.

We, the comics that we like, we're all, like, post-humor.