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.
Daniel KehlmannOne 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.
Daniel KehlmannUsually 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.
Daniel KehlmannWhen I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that's something that draws us to novels - that the characters always have a fate. Even if it's a terrible fate, at least they have one.
Daniel KehlmannSo 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.
Daniel Kehlmann