The First Twenty Years Of

I Came Out Of The Soviet Union No Longer A Communist, Because I Believed In Personal Freedom.

The First Twenty Years Of My Life Were Wasted. I Didn't Fit My Environment, And I Didn't Know Any Other.

Writing Fiction Is An Endless And Always Defeated Effort To Capture Some Quality Of Life Without Killing It.

The Prairies Were Dust. Day After Day, Summer After Summer, The Scorching Winds Blew The Dust And The Sun Was Brassy In A Yellow Sky. Crop After Crop Failed. Again And Again The Barren Land Must Be Mortgaged For Taxes And Food And Next Year's Seed. The Agony Of Hope Ended When There Was Not Harvest And No More Credit, No Money To Pay Interest And Taxes; The Banker Took The Land. Then The Bank Failed.

Even The Street, The Sunshine, The Very Air Had A Special Sunday Quality. We Walked Differently On Sundays, With Greater Propriety And Stateliness. Greetings Were More Formal, More Subdued, Voices More Meticulously Polite. Everything Was So Smooth, Bland, Polished. And Genuinely So, Because This Was Sunday. In Church The Rustling And The Stillness Were Alike Pervaded With The Knowledge That All Was For The Best. Propriety Ruled The Universe. God Was In His Heaven, And We Were In Our Sunday Clothes.