Asthmatic Immigrant Learns To Breathe By Writing.

You Can't Have A Russian Household Without Vodka. It's Just Something To Wash Everything Down With. I Can't Remember A Time When I Didn't Drink Vodka, Either In Russia Or Here. I Don't Think There's Ever A Wrong Time To Start Drinking It. My Ancestors Drank It, And If I Ever Have Any Children, They'll Be Drinking It.

Also, I've Spent An Entire Week Without Reading Any Books Or Talking About Them Too Loudly. I'm Learning To Work My Apparat's Screen, The Colourful Pulsating Mosaic Of It, The Fact That It Knows Every Last Stinking Detail About The World, Whereas My Books Only Know The Minds Of Their Authors.

In A Strange Way, I Expected Russia To Become More Like America Since The Soviet Union Collapsed, But The Reverse Is True. America Has Become More Like Russia: A Kleptocratic Society.

I Love To Act, I've Always Wanted To Be An Actor. I Think That Acting And Fiction Go Nicely Together - Being Able To Visualize Language As Something You Perform, Not Just Something That's There On The Page.

Reading Is Difficult. People Just Aren't Meant To Read Anymore. We're In A Post-literate Age. You Know, A Visual Age. How Many Years After The Fall Of Rome Did It Take For A Dante To Appear? Many, Many Years.