“I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character...” — Martha Grimes Quote

“I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character, to a particular atmosphere or setting. But most mystery writers, I think, are controlled by the plot.”

“I don't think I could have just kept writing the 'Richard Jury' books. It wasn't that I was bored or dissatisfied. I just had to write something else.”

“There are people who read Tolstoy or Dostoevski who do not insist that their endings be happy or pleasant or, at least, not be depressing. But if you're writing mysteries - oh, no, you can't have an ending like that. It must be tidy.”

“I think Yandex is something in between two different cultures. One originated from the old Soviet culture of the scientific institute. It was a free atmosphere of scientists, maybe too free because nobody cared about making money. Another origin is something close to what you usually see in California startups.”

“To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere.”