The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Aphorisms are food for thought - like sushi, they come in small portions that are both delicious and exquisitely formed. And, like sushi, I can never get enough.
I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity', so to speak.
There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.
Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.
Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.
When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.
I begin every novel with the vow that I will not write about technology, Catholicism, or Hell. As you know, I end up writing about all three. They just happen to be personal obsessions of mine.
I believe aphorisms are best when first read in the wild, free from the confines of any categories.