Famous Quotes by Bernhard Schlink

“Când ne deschidemtu mie şi eu ţie,când ne scufundămtu în mine şi eu în tine,când ne pierdemtu în mine şi eu în tine,Abia atuncieu sunt euşi tu eşti tu.”

Loneliness isn't being alone, it's being with the wrong person.

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

Adultery changes its meaning even at the brink of war.

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.

She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do.

One can do without such experiences without feelings or empathy.

Love asks how I can help.

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

I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy.

I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me.

What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.

Wherever it says 'I' in my poems, I mean 'we'.

One thing is certain, we can't escape horror, only recognize it.

Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones.

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

She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile.

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 was not kept?

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.