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There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

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

Children Love Myself Parents Perhaps Responsible Talk
When we open ourselves you yourself to me and I myself to you, when we submerge you into me and I into you when we vanish into me you and into you I Then am I me and you are you.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Ourselves Submerge Vanish Yourself
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Reader Suffering
There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Lying Truth Needs
When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Airplane Failing Flight
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
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
…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
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
I can’t say I’m thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn’t want to escape it. I have accepted it.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Accepted Sometimes Want
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
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

Crime Monster People
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

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

Love More Reader Suffering
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

Apology Begged Hurt Mistake
Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Arriving Running Running Away
why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Beautiful Dark Shatter Truth
Bravery is good when the cause is good.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Bravery Causes Good
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
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
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
Philosophy has forgotten about children
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Children Forgotten Philosophy
The past has to be remembered, so that it’s never repeated.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Past Remembered Repeated
Sometimes all it took was a scene in a movie. This juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity seemed suspicious even to me.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Callousness Juxtaposition Sensitivity Sometimes

There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

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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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