English is not my native language, and up to the age of 20, I wasn't capable of writing a single paragraph in English without major errors in grammar and word choice.

Maybe, for matters of style only, my results would be better if I were to stick to German. But I like to write for an international audience.

At the beginning of the third millennium, whatever is written in German only, is unlikely to have much impact. In this respect, German, unfortunately, ranks on one level with Italian, or Dutch, or Swedish... and far below Arabic, Chinese, and even French and Spanish.

I don't care if my writing falls short of qualifying as literature. I do not write in order to produce beautiful sentences. I write to communicate ideas.

My ideas evolve. I was not born with a fixed set of ideas, and I didn't receive a fixed set of ideas by divine inspiration, as some founders of religions have claimed. While my ideas of a few years ago went into the same direction as the ideas I hold now, they are not identical.

Furthermore, my knowledge isn't universal. While my ideas on what our society should be like, or how we properly ought to view ourselves in this world, are all based on what I know about the world, errors in my perception of facts, and the way, these errors are reflected in my writing, all undermine not only my credibility but also the correctness of my opinions.

Nevertheless, I am confident that my current opinions on the world and the meaning of human life, by and large make better sense than what is or has been produced by other writers who cover, or have covered, the same topics.

If I look at how off the mark other explanations of the world are (especially religious explanations), then I am very happy indeed, if I am more than 50 percent right.

On the other hand, I sometimes tone down, for practical reasons, articles that do represent my true opinions, simply because I want to live in peace. For me personally, I see no benefit being in the public arena, and I have no intention whatsoever to be a hero, or a fighter for the truth.

Because my individual life will cease with my individual death, and I have, at the bottom of my heart, no interest in a world in which I will not exist, I would always do a Galileo when my writing starts to disturb the path I have chosen for my existence: a largely anonymous life of sexual pleasure, and after that, if possible, a gentle death.