The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements. . . all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad.
The rules are very strict.
I think it's dead bodies that really haunt me.
Odd, isn't it? You know when your birthday is, but not your death day, even though you pass the date year after year, never suspecting that some day.
A story comes to you; it isn't like you choose it. You have no real control.
You look back on some little decision you made and realize all the things that happened because of it, and you think to yourself "if only I'd known," but, of course, you couldn't have known.
I think more people now have relationships with agents than with editors. And I don't have an agent.
We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two.
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.