Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn’t fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.

What should he do if word went around that in his throne room hung a magic picture that only the highborn could see, but he couldn’t? Of course there was no picture there, it had been one of the fool’s jokes, but now that the canvas hung there, it had developed its own power.

English has a better way with colloquialisms. It has colloquialisms that are colorful and expressive but not too heavy or distracting. In German, if you use colloquialisms, it quickly descends into some kind of dialect literature.

But why people? I asked. What does he care about people? He’s a bear.

I’m trying to exploit the bestseller, in a way, but not in the sense of repeating the formula. It’s just that the bestseller did so well economically that now I’m freer to do what I want to do, or to try out what I want to try out.

I think that’s just what happens when you write a big bestseller. After that you need to find out: What’s the best way to go on? And the worst thing you could do would be to try to repeat the formula. That would be suffocating.

I wanted to write a book that would leave open many riddles and mysteries, even to me. Of course in some cases I do know the answers, but in many others I don’t know and don’t want to know.

English is much drier. You can get away with a lot less. Pathos, lyricism, these are things you have to tone down if you want the English version of the book to work.

When I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that’s something that draws us to novels – that the characters always have a fate. Even if it’s a terrible fate, at least they have one.

Also, whenever you have direct speech, and I don’t quite know why, but it always gets better in English. Dialogue, the flow of dialogue, English just has a better way with it.