When I Was Young, When I Started

Reading Was Such An Enrichment Of My Life. And It Was That Pleasure That I Had As A Very Young Reader Probably That Is The Origin Of My Vocation.

There Are Many Things Behind A Good Novel, But In Particular There Is A Lot Of Work - A Lot Of Patience, A Lot Of Stubbornness, And A Critical Spirit.

Journalism Has Been Very Important For Me - For A Long Time I Made My Living As A Journalist, And It Also Serves As A Source Of Ideas. Many Of The Things I Have Written I Would Not Have Written Without The Experience Of Being A Journalist.

I Completely Believe That - Literature For Me Is A Way Of Life. That's Probably True Of All Writers Or All Artists. I Think In The End This Kind Of Activity Absorbs One In Such A Way That It Becomes One's Way Of Life.

This Fact Was Something I Also Learned From This First Novel That I Needed Personal Experience To Invent, To Fantasize, To Create Fiction, But At The Same Time I Needed Some Distance, Some Perspective On This Experience In Order To Feel Free Enough To Manipulate It And To Transform It Into Fiction. If The Experience Is Very Close, I Feel Inhibited. I Have Never Been Able To Write Fiction About Something That Has Happened To Me Recently. If The Closeness Of The Real Reality, Of Living Reality, Is To Have A Persuasive Effect On My Imagination, I Need A Distance, A Distance In Time And In Space.