A Quote by Molly Antopol

In terms of the Eastern Europe stories, my family is originally from there; even as a kid, it was the Russian writers I loved most, and I've spent a substantial amount of time there myself, traveling and on research grants.
Vladimir Putin is a Russian czar. He's kind of a mix of Peter the Great and Stalin. He's got both in his veins. And he looks out first and foremost for the national security interests of Russia. He accepts that, in Eastern Europe, that is a Russian backyard, that is a Russian sphere of influence. Ukraine lives most uncomfortably and unhappily in a Russian backyard.
The problem is Russia is a country that has lost 300 years of its history, in terms of most of what was part of the Russian Empire in Europe, towards Europe, since Peter the Great, has been the territory that is no longer under Russian rule.
I don't want to predict calamity. But I am afraid of a new Russian occupation of parts of Eastern Europe. Also of a new Russian campaign to exert influence in Germany or other parts Europe, aimed at making continental politics less democratic. I am afraid of a US trade war and even a shooting war with China.
I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me. Alice Munro, I felt that way about from an early time. Grace Paley.
I was born in Eastern Europe, in Latvia, and I'm fluent in Russian.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
I don't have a lot of free time with the amount of traveling that I do, but most of pro wrestling isn't catered to me. I am not a kid. There are a lot of guys that complain to me about the product, but it's like, well, you are not a kid. It is catered to sell t-shirts and merchandise to kids and their parents.
I spent the first seven years of my life in a caravan traveling around Europe and the United States because my parents were just obsessed with traveling.
I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.
Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.
I love stories. I loved stories when I was a kid. My mom read stories to me all the time.
Yiddish, originally, in Eastern Europe was considered the language of children, of the illiterate, of women. And 500 years later, by the 19th century, by the 18th century, writers realized that, in order to communicate with the masses, they could no longer write in Hebrew. They needed to write in Yiddish, the language of the population.
Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.
Gandhi became my role model. I have always been interested in Eastern philosophy. Since early in my life I've been fascinated by India, and I have spent a great deal of time traveling in that country.
I think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.
The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.
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