Anthony Marra

“For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.”

“I'm wondering when you hit the age where people say, 'Oh, OK, he's not so young.'”

“You will have the last word.' 'Your name will be that word.”

“Then Brezhnev grabbed the wheel of power and captained the country with the exploratory heart of a municipal bus driver.”

“She felt as buoyantly patriotic as her Chechen classmates who could trace their family trees back to the acorns”

“The stomach is not the only vital organ that hungers.”

“During the 20th century, Chechnya was written about by local poets and novelists, as well as writers from Russia and Central Asia, but very little is available in English translation.”

“I didn't know a single person who had ever been there. I wasn't even sure how to spell Chechnya.”

“The future is the lie with which we justify the brutality of the present.”

“Time became more important the closer to death one was, so an extra few hours to make peace with the world were worth more than years.”

“Bill Watterson argued with his medium even as he eclipsed it. He was all too aware that no artistic expression better exemplifies our disposable consumer culture than the daily newspaper comic strip: today's masterpiece is tomorrow's birdcage lining.”

“You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it's your child, if it's your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I've wanted to explore for some time.”

“Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean. The chairs were all curvy works of art that turned sitting into yoga exercises.”

“The look on his face told her what had happened and that hurt burrowed deeper than anything she'd ever felt, deep enough to change from the thing she felt to the thing she was. Love, she learned, could reduce its recipient to an essential thing, as important as food or shelter, whose presence is not only longed for but needed.”

“It's hard to think of another body of work that is more universally beloved - I don't think I've ever met someone who has encountered 'Calvin and Hobbes' without falling for them.”

“Never forget the first three letters of confidence.”

“Ever since studying in Russia as a college student, I had been in a long-distance, one-sided love affair with Chechnya's remarkable history, culture and rugged natural beauty.”

“But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.”

“I read all of the nonfiction that I could find on Chechnya, and all the while, I was searching for a novel that was set there. I couldn't find a single novel written in English that was set in the period of the two most recent Chechen wars.”

“Grozny's been largely rebuilt. But at the same time, I think the war is very much being waged inside its survivors.”