I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative when I'm looking out the window, and my bed and couch have nice views of the New York skyline.
Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.
You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.
I was very, very sick when I was growing up in Russia. The ambulance constantly came to our house. I had horrible asthma that is easily treated in America, but they didn't even have inhalers back in Russia.
Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
