Sometimes all it took was a scene in a movie. This juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity seemed suspicious even to me.
BERNHARD SCHLINKIt 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.
More Bernhard Schlink Quotes
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Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
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Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.
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The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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…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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Sometimes I had the feeling that she hurt herself when she turned cold and rigid. As if what she was yearning for was the warmth of my apologies, protestations, and entreaties. Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice.
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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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Bravery is good when the cause is good.
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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.
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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 -
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews?
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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.
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Philosophy has forgotten about children
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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.
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We make our own truths and lies….Truths are often lies and lies truths.
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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
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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 -
The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
The more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK -
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 -
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 -
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