But I'm a writer. I'm a teacher. In both cases, I try to be a witness, but not a symbol. I don't believe in suffering. There are so many good writers, and some of them are great writers.
Hope is so futile.
Very often we try to invent it, to recreate it, to create it, to invoke it, sometimes even to cling to it. So I'm not a symbol. Some of the early years of the book involve your work in trying to open channels of communication to the then Soviet Union, working on behalf of men like Anatoly Cheranski, who are now free for many years. Oh, that is true. If anyone had told me when I was in the Soviet Union the first time in 1965 that I would live to see the downfall of communism, the opening of the gates, the change of the moods or the atmosphere, the structure, I wouldn't have believed it.