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 SCHLINKI 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.
More Bernhard Schlink Quotes
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I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
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
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
I took all the blame. I admitted mistakes I hadn’t made, intentions I’d never had. Whenever she turned cold and hard, I begged her to be good to me again, to forgive me and love me.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
…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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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 -
Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
Philosophy has forgotten about children
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
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 -
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.
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When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK