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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

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

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

Airplane Failing Flight
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

Awkward Seductive World
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

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

Reader Suffering
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

Citizen Married Trying
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
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
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
When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Airplane Failing Flight
Philosophy has forgotten about children
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Children Forgotten Philosophy
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
…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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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