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.

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.

You say fate is almost indispensable to literature - I think it's completely indispensable, at least in a novel, because a novel always has a plot. Even if nothing happens, even if someone just spends a day walking around Dublin, or whatever, there's still something going on.

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.

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.

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.

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.