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

Bernhard Schlink

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

Arriving Running Running Away
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
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
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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Book Illustration Move Rights
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 SCHLINK

Citizens Married Trying
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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Answers Children Thinking
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?
BERNHARD SCHLINK

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

Answers Chests Rummaged
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
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Laundry Past Smell Sweat
…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.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Children Done Parent
Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Memories Sometimes Stay True
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
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
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
The past has to be remembered, so that it’s never repeated.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Past Remembered Repeated
Philosophy has forgotten about children
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Children Forgotten Philosophy

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

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

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