Also, whenever you have direct speech, and I don't quite know why, but it always gets better in English. Dialogue, the flow of dialogue, English just has a better way with it.

English is much drier. You can get away with a lot less. Pathos, lyricism, these are things you have to tone down if you want the English version of the book to work.

I wanted to write a book that would leave open many riddles and mysteries, even to me. Of course in some cases I do know the answers, but in many others I don't know and don't want to know.

A neglect of one's sentimental education early in life could bear the most unfortunate fruit.

People who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all.

When you translate the American writers who are best with dialogue into German - someone like Elmore Leonard, or Tom Wolfe, who's also quite good with dialogue. It's very hard to translate them well.

Exactly as we might ask God, and do ask God, to change our fate. The difference is that in the story the writer actually replies and in the end even changes his mind.

Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.

Everything is so soft here, ' he said, 'so easy...' 'I know

Her eyes burn like a match head striking my flesh with ferocity and precision to ignite the night with a divinorum induced dream.

I was born to be a leader. I love the fact that millions of people look up to me.

The amazing thing now is that most of those so-called critics who were telling me to find my own voice seem to have lost theirs.

The only thing I change mainly is my sneakers. I love sneakers. But everything's sort of black or jeans. Jeans, always.

Once you experience forgiveness, your outer world changes.

I don't really mind criticism in music or in shows and stuff like that at all. I mean, it doesn't really worry me even if it's like out of place. At least it's relevant.

Families are the treasure of heaven.

I was supposed to be a doctor. I was supposed to go to Princeton. And everything I was supposed to do I didn't.

A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank; a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well.