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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.

Bernhard Schlink

We make our own truths and lies….Truths are often lies and lies truths.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Lying Make Own Truth
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
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
Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Arriving Running Running Away
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
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Labyrinth Memories Passion
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 no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Lying Truth Needs
Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Memories Sometimes Stay True
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
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
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 Struggle Victory
The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Law Stories Successful
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
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Reader Suffering
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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