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

Bernhard Schlink

It was more dangerous not to go; I was running the risk of becoming trapped in my own fantasies. So I was doing the right thing by going. She would behave normally, I would behave normally, and everything would be normal again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Right Risk Running Thing Trapped
Sometimes I had the feeling that she hurt herself when she turned cold and rigid. As if what she was yearning for was the warmth of my apologies, protestations, and entreaties. Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Apologize Herself Rigid Sometimes Warmth
When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Airplane Failing Flight
I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. …And perhaps we are responsible even for the love we feel for our parents.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Children Love Myself Parents Perhaps Responsible Talk
What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews?
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Believe Experiment Fall Guilt
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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Feeling Long Sad Thinking
There’s this old saying that, if you aren’t particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don’t want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don’t know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I’ve never regretted it.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Doctors Teachers Want
Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Memories Sometimes Stay True
Or is there no such thing as ‘too late’? Is there only ‘late’ and is ‘late’ always better than ‘never’? I don’t know.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

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

Futile Law Stories Successful
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Labyrinth Memories Passion
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Reader Suffering
She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn’t do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Retreat Struggle Victory
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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Betray Criminals Guilty
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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Monster People
She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn’t do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Retreat Show Struggle Victory

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

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

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