“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.”

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.

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

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

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

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.

Bravery is good when the cause is good.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

…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.

Philosophy has forgotten about children

I’ve definitely had a few moments in my life where I’ve seen somebody and it’s blown me away at first sight

There are many things that keep me from getting married. But there will be a time when marriage makes sense to me.

Never date a guy who has a pet lizard (he’s probably into weird stuff in bed) and never under any circumstances go on a second date with a guy who says the word “married” on the first date (he’ll turn out to be a mama’s boy or a religious type)

My girlfriend wants to get married. I tell you – I hope she meets somebody nice.

I don’t think it’s fair – you get married, you give your wife a wedding ring. I think you should give her a mood ring.

The way I look at it is everybody should have the right to get married, if they so choose

What’s cool about renting is that you don’t care about your house getting destroyed. So I think that is the number

In searching out my genealogy I found about four hundred of my female kindred who were never married. I asked Pres.