I Read Real Books. On Paper. You

She Took My Hand And Pulled Me After Her, Her Shoulders Giving Off A Sweet Peppermint Concoction That The Bodies Of Young Women Sometimes Produce To Make My Life More Difficult.

The Fading Light Is Us, And We Are, For A Moment So Brief (...) Beautiful.

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.

I Was A Jackass In Many Ways. I Projected That Cruelty Towards Others, That Kid Whose Hand I Was Wringing. If I Could Have Hurt A Hundred Weaklings - Weaker Than Me, And I Was Already Very Weak - I Would. I Was Dying To Hurt Somebody, To Pay It Forward.

Usually, With A Novel, You Start With No Idea What To Do Because Your Job Is To Create Convincing Characters And Then They Just Run Around Getting Crazy. The Problem With Writing A Memoir, Obviously, Is You Can't Do That Because You Sort Of Know What's Going To Happen. Because You're The Character.