Why did people manufacture trouble when there was already so much of it in the world?

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Hunger is the best seasoning.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?