"Only someone with an individual voice of his own can describe what is impossible to describe" (p51) - Gail Hareven

Being a mother — especially of twins — taught me how to work efficiently. Family life saves one from the dangers of solipsism, which I think many writers encounter. One has to learn how to live with two parallel worlds, and, in a way, use the actual life as a good and safe base from which one can send expeditions to that parallel world. I think that dealing only with words all the time doesn’t do one any good. It’s good to remember that there are other human beings around you.

Personally, I think it’s very important for a writer to know what kinds of things are beyond his or her knowledge. Even though I spent a lot of time with people who came from Russia, and visited Russia eight times before writing “Confessions,” I knew it wasn’t possible for me to write what’s going on in Alek’s mind.

Sometimes you have to stick your finger down your throat and vomit up the disgusting insides of the self... sometimes you have to increase the nausea in order to get rid of the disgust... (p12)