Amor Towles

In the contemporary world, we think of politeness as surface behavior, like frosting - it's sweet and attractive and finishes off the cake. But 19th century nobility and the enlightened thinkers and stoics before them viewed manners in a very different way. To them, manners are an outward expression of an inward struggle. ”

When I sat down to write 'Rules of Civility,' I didn't write it for anybody but myself. I wasn't trying to make my mark or make money. I wasn't anxious about feeding my kids or whether my father would be proud of me. ”

We study, as Americans, the extreme aspects of repression under the Stalinist era. We're focused on them. The vast majority of Russian citizens, it was a much softer type of being disconcerted. ”

As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it. ”

I totally remember that: being 25 and unemployed and trying to stretch each cappuccino for 60 minutes. ”

I love 19th-century Russian literature, the avant garde, the Soviet period. ”

My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was 30 because she was having too much fun to settle down. ”

All the historical elements should feel organic to the story but not hammered down to serve a purpose. ”

As awful as the crimes of Stalinism were, the vast majority of the Russian population was trying to survive, to love, to have a sense of purpose. ”

Dad has worked as a banker at the same firm in Boston, living in the same suburban neighborhood for over 50 years. Later in life, when I got out of graduate school and imagined myself living the life of a writer like Hemingway or Kerouac, his practical self inevitably encouraged me to get a steady a job and raise a family, just like he did. ”