Home > Author > Bernhard Schlink
41 " 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
42 " Ne ispada li, onda, da je egzistencijalni umor rezultat premalog, a ne prevelikog angažovanja? Postajemo li umorni usled toga što olakšavamo sebi situaciju, a ne stoga što je otežavamo? "
― Bernhard Schlink , Homecoming
43 " 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
44 " At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. 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. "
45 " The geological 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. "
46 " A veces, un final doloroso hace que el recuerdo traicione la felicidad pasada. A lo mejor es que la única felicidad verdadera es la que dura siempre. "
47 " Warum wird uns, was schön war, im Rückblick dadurch brüchig, daß es häßliche Wahrheiten verbarg? Manchmal hält die Erinnerung dem Glück schon dann die Treue nicht, wenn das Ende schmerzlich war. Weil Glück nur stimmt, wenn es ewig hält? Weil schmerzlich nur enden kann, was schmerzlich gewesen ist, unbewußt und unerkannt? "
48 " Executioners don’t hate the people they execute, and they execute them all the same. Because they’re ordered to.الجلادون لا يكرهون الناس الذين يعدمونهم ,إنهم يعدمونهم جميعاً بالطريقة نفسها لأنهم مأمورون بذلك. "
49 " Tôi yêu cô say mê, phải chăng đó là cái giá phải trả cho việc cô ngủ với tôi? Cho đến giờ, sau một đêm với phụ nữ tôi có cảm giác mình đã được chiều chuộng và nay phải đền đáp lại - đền đáp cho người phụ nữ ấy, bằng cách là dù sao tôi cũng cố tìm cách yêu cô ta, và đền đáp cho thế giới mà tôi dám đương đầu. "
50 " Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.. "
51 " Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. "
52 " When we open ourselvesyou yourself to me and I myself to you,when we submergeyou into me and I into youwhen we vanishinto me you and into you IThenam I meand you are you. "
53 " 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. "
54 " 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. "
55 " ...So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does. "
56 " 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. "
57 " Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again. "
58 " 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 "
59 " But then she was not awkward, she was slow-flowing, graceful, seductive - a seductiveness that had nothing to do with breast and hips and legs, but was an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body "
60 " ...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. "