Bernhard Schlink Quotes

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.

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.

why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

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?

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

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.

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.

I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.

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

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.