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.
BERNHARD SCHLINKWhen an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
More Bernhard Schlink Quotes
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Philosophy has forgotten about children
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Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
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But then she was not awkward, she was slow-flowing, graceful, seductive – a seductiveness that had nothing to do with breast and hips and legs, but was an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body
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Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.
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There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
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The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
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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.
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I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.
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…I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her.
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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.
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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.
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The more I suffer, the more I love.
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why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
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I’m not frightened. I’m not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice.
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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