It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.

The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists.

It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

So I have no grounds to complain; on the contrary, writers should consider the condition of permanent controversiality to be invigorating, part of the risk envolved in choosing the profesión. It is a fact of life that writers have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of the high and mighty. That is what makes the history of literature analogous to the development and refinement of censorship.

I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.