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.

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.

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.

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.

Happy thoughts bring happiness, love, and success.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!

The cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning!

If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.

The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly.

I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan.

It's always a fascinating subject - a serial killer let loose on a small community. It always holds, it's always scary.

Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.