What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time.

Maybe in the general scheme of things he couldn't find any meaning in life, but on a smaller scale it was okay. Not always, but a lot of the time.

Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.

What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

For my mother, having a family was the most important thing in her life. In the Second World War, it was a challenge - surviving physically and mentally and finding somebody who you loved and who was willing to be with you.