It’s easy. Because whatever I do, I do it with love. The work of the medical doctor is wonderful if one does it honorably. There is nothing more rewarding than to help someone in pain, even if it is only with a kind word. Kind words for everyone and from anyone have a healing effect, especially if a doctor speaks them.
In this context, I would like to mention: When I was in Zagreb on the occasion of receiving a big award, a young man wrote in Idex.h how happy he was that I had received the award: he congratulated me and expressed gratitude because in the 1980s, he wrote, I had saved his life.
I printed out this little note and it means more to me than all my books, all the awards and acknowledgements. What are books in this world compared to a human life?
I don’t look at writing as work. It doesn’t require any effort on my part. On the contrary, it relaxes and heals me. I have never been an ambitious person, nor did I take up writing in order to become “somebody”. It is enough that I am a human being. Although my books are required reading in academic programs from primary school to university, and although I have received more than ten important literary awards and acknowledgements, and my works have been translated into German, English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Slovakian, Hungarian, Polish, Albanian and Turkish, I don’t take myself seriously as a writer. In my opinion, those who do take themselves very seriously usually have some unresolved issues to deal with.

They don’t please or displease me. Each author is a world to himself or herself. Of course, Poe is certainly a great, a very great name. I have tried not to imitate anyone but to develop an authentic, recognizable style of my own. I could perhaps write differently, books that are considered serious, but I think that in their present form they are accessible to a larger number of people.

I am completely happy with my life. I have a husband whom I love, two children who are already grown up, two little granddaughters. I have even managed to plant a tree; and I have been able to feed many abandoned street dogs and cats. I live at peace with myself and the world and in harmony with nature.

Now, it is true that the stories in this book are dark, a bit morbid, not in the least like me. That was me stepping out into an unknown world, and the inspiration was a little strange. Most of the ideas were drawn from snippets from the Black Chronicle in the daily papers: my story-telling was based and built on them.

I have just completed a new novel Like that Dawn Long Ago (Kao jedne davne zore). As for the future, I never plan. There is no yesterday (because it has passed) and there is no tomorrow (because I don’t know if it will come), there is only this very moment.