Bernhard Schlink > Quotes

“There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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 a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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 I had the feeling that she hurt herself when she turned cold and rigid. As if what she was yearning for was the warmth of my apologies, protestations, and entreaties. Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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 everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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. 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, The Reader

“...So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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, The Reader

“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?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“There’s no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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

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

“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, The Reader

“...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. 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.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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, The Reader

“So I was still guilty. And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“...if something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. 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.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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, The Reader

“Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist - do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn't admit to being left handed - do you tell the judge what's going on? Imagine he's gay, and could not have committed the crime because he's gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn't a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay --- just imagine that he is”
― Bernhard Schlink

“I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

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

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

“In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled freshed, freshly washed or of freshed laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.”
― Bernhard Schlink