Bernhard Schlink Quotes

There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

When an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.

People who commit monstrous crimes are not necessarily monsters. If they were, things would be easy. But they aren't and it is one of the experiences of life.

When we open ourselves you yourself to me and I myself to you, when we submerge you into me and I into you when we vanish into me you and into you I Then am I me and you are you.

Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.

I certainly know German colleagues in the US who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

The more I suffer, the more I love.

What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.

I can't say I'm thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn't want to escape it. I have accepted it.

Bravery is good when the cause is good.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?

why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

Philosophy has forgotten about children

Or is there no such thing as 'too late'? Is there only 'late' and is 'late' always better than 'never'? I don't know.

So I was still guilty. And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.

I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.

We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths.

In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled freshed, freshly washed or of freshed laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved

As an author, you can't expect a movie to be an illustration of the book. If that's what you hope for, you shouldn't sell the rights.

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.

I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers.

Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.

The past has to be remembered, so that it's never repeated.

But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her.

It is as if people refused to leave their dead alone, forced them back into the light, made them keep their composure even in death.

Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill?

We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...

Când ne deschidemtu mie şi eu ţie, când ne scufundămtu în mine şi eu în tine, când ne pierdemtu în mine şi eu în tine, Abia atuncieu sunt euşi tu eşti tu.