I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it’s especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as ‘do-gooders.’ This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.
People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later they seem to him alien and strange. I am trying to decipher that child. Sometimes he is a stranger to me. When you think about when you were 14, don’t you feel a certain alienation?
When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.
Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called ‘Death of Wood’ about one such world, on the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and what was then still the German Democratic Republic.
When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.
Our minds aren’t bound by a chronological corset. When thinking and dreaming, past, present and future are mixed up. That’s also possible for a writer.
I remember when I was writing ‘The Tin Drum,’ I had the totally misguided idea of giving Oskar Matzerath a sister, and he just wouldn’t have it. There was no space for a sister, yet I had the character of the sister in my head. In fact I used her in later novels, in ‘Cat and Mouse’ and ‘Dog Years,’ Tulla Pokriski.
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