For a professional writer in the Soviet Union, it works this way. First, you have to have something to say - that's the main thing. Second, it's a matter of who publishes you. If your book has real stuff in it, readers will ferret it out, even in a Siberian journal.

A writer's main tool is his memory - his own memory, the collective memory of his people. And the strongest memory is the one that is created by a wound to the heart.

The comforts come from my movie and television writing. It is unusual to live this well simply from books.

All my books are adventures, but they also have a social viewpoint.

When I see someone who is starved, they don't look alert. They don't have boundless energy. If you're too skinny, it looks like you're near death.

Therefore I do pray and entreat you in the name of Jesus Christ to do so much as to make my being here in Japan known to my poor wife, in a manner a widow and my two children fatherless; which thing only is my greatest grief of heart and conscience.

Andrew Wood's death changed things for a few weeks. I probably got even heavier into drugs after that.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.