By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.

And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

The pharmaceutical corporations are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country