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.

It's also one of these strange points where metaphysics converges with economy. Because really what the experts are doing is creating value by banishing doubt. All great dead painters basically have this one person, this expert who has the metaphysical power to grant a seal of authenticity.

English has a better way with colloquialisms. It has colloquialisms that are colorful and expressive but not too heavy or distracting. In German, if you use colloquialisms, it quickly descends into some kind of dialect literature.

I think that's just what happens when you write a big bestseller. After that you need to find out: What's the best way to go on? And the worst thing you could do would be to try to repeat the formula. That would be suffocating.

German can take a lot more pathos than English can. When you say "pathetic" in English it's a disparaging term, but when you say "pathetisch" in German it's just a description, not necessarily negative. That says a lot already.

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.

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.