I think I can work anywhere, but you don't get the same kind of inspiration everywhere. New York theater has become a big inspiration for me. I only started writing for the stage myself because I like to see the good, mostly off-Broadway plays in New York.

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 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.

Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English.

Usually I work out the plot before I start. This time I thought: Writers always talk about not knowing where a book is going - -I want to experience that, too. What I found out is that it's very interesting, but it takes much longer because you have so many false starts. You take wrong turns and you have to go back and start the whole chapter, or the whole section, from scratch.

I really just wanted to write about three brothers. When you do that, though, it gives you this wonderful opportunity to tie together different social milieus, because siblings usually move into different worlds as they grow up.

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.