Quotes by Bernhard Schlink

“Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had...”

“I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. Y...”

“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.”

“Cnd ne deschidemtu mie i eu ie,cnd ne scufundmtu n mine i eu n tine,cnd ne pierdemtu n mine i eu n tine,Abia atuncieu sunt eui tu eti tu.”

“We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...”

“I could never stop comparing the way it was with Gertrud and the way it had been with Hanna; again and again, Gertrud and I would hold each other, and I would feel that something was wrong, that sh...”

“Philosophy has forgotten about children”

“Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that ...”

“Being ill when you are a child or growing up is such an enchanted interlude! The outside world, the world of free time in the yard or the garden or on the street, is only a distant murmmur in the s...”

“Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill?”

“When he answered, he went all the way back to beginnings. He instructed me about the individual, about freedom and dignity, about the human being as subject and the fact that one may not turn him i...”

“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?”

“As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for h...”

“They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the ...”

“It is as if people refused to leave their dead alone, forced them back into the light, made them keep their composure even in death.”

“Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and e...”

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

“Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- th...”

“The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?”

“Bravery is good when the cause is good.”