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.

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.

People who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all.

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 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.

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.

A neglect of one's sentimental education early in life could bear the most unfortunate fruit.