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

Labyrinth Memories Passion
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
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
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
When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

Airplane Failing Flight
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 more I suffer, the more I love.
BERNHARD SCHLINK

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

Knows Late Too
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
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
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

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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