
Philosophy has forgotten about children —
Bernhard Schlink

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

Prayer means talking over with Jesus everything that happens from morning until night. —
Basilea Schlink

As an author, you can't expect a movie to be an illustration of the book. If that's what you hope for, you shouldn't sell the rights. —
Bernhard Schlink

Berg, Sophia may be a Greek name, but that is no reason for you to study your neighbor in a Greek lesson. Translate! —
Bernhard Schlink

The angels of God are bright and shining beings, emanating light and mirroring the glory of God. —
Basilea Schlink

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

There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does. —
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

I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture it's beauty. —
Bernhard Schlink

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 value of being brave, working hard, saving money keeping order depends on what it's for. —
Bernhard Schlink

When did you know you were going to be a writer?
I knew it when I was young, I forgot it in my 30ties, then I remembered it again. —
Bernhard Schlink

I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air. —
Bernhard Schlink

The past has to be remembered, so that it's never repeated. —
Bernhard Schlink

Prayer means rushing to the Father as His child. It means asking and receiving, loving and thanking Him. —
Basilea Schlink

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

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. —
Bernhard Schlink

Bravery is good when the cause is good. —
Bernhard Schlink

Only good things come from God's hands. He never gives you more than you can bear. Every burden prepares you for eternity. —
Basilea Schlink

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? —
Bernhard Schlink

I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both —
Bernhard Schlink

When an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight. —
Bernhard Schlink

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

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

The more I suffer, the more I love. —
Bernhard Schlink

As an author, you hope for a director and a cast that will make something wonderful out of your book. —
Bernhard Schlink

We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst. —
Bernhard Schlink

Why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? —
Bernhard Schlink

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. —
Bernhard Schlink

I love writing, and I am never as happy as when I have a week, a month - three months - with nothing to do but write. —
Bernhard Schlink

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