129 Quotes by Bernhard Schlink

As a citizen and someone who was a judge on the constitutional law court for 18 years, I feel whenever I can raise my voice with the hope of being heard I need to do it, but I wouldn’t assign a special wisdom and responsibility to writers.

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.

Doing history means building bridges between the past and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides.

But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one’s self-righteousness?

Which animal do you see when you hold me and close your eyes and think of animals?

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.

I wanted to pose myself both tasks – understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.

I unfortunately see no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.

Maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be.