I'm trying to exploit the bestseller, in a way, but not in the sense of repeating the formula. It's just that the bestseller did so well economically that now I'm freer to do what I want to do, or to try out what I want to try out.

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.

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.

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.

One of the points where the art world is at its most metaphysical is in this weird aspect of the power of the expert. There are experts who claim they cannot be fooled because they have an inner connection to an artist and can feel whether something is genuine or fake. I've heard experts say, on panels: When it comes to my period, or my painters, I cannot be fooled. And of course that's completely ridiculous.

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.

So the fact that there's someone who's planning what happens to the characters, writing it down, means that the characters always have a fate. And when we think about fate, we tend think of it as the thing we would have if we were literary characters, that is, if there were somebody out there, writing us.