You Could Drown A Kitten In Her

You Are Not What You Want. You Are What Wants You Back.

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.

I Have Some Memories Of Certain Things That Happened In High School When I Was Stoned Out Of My Mind, But I Talked With Other People About Them, And I Trusted The Aggregated Memories.

I Reveled In The Smallness, The Coziness Of An Upstairs Bedroom In A Traditional American Cape Cod House The Half-floor That Forces You To Duck, To Feel Small And Naive Again, Ready For Anything, Dying For Love, Your Body A Chimney Filled With Odd, Black Smoke. These Square, Squat, Awkward Rooms Are Like A Fifty-square-foot Paean To Teenage-hood, To Ripeness, To The First And Last Taste Of Youth.

The Greatest Books In Russian Literature Are Satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, For Example, Is A Very Over-the-top Satire About Life In Russia. I Think It's The Thing We Do Best.