Bernhard Schlink

“The truth of what one says lies in what one does.”

— Bernhard Schlink

Philosophy has forgotten about children

— Bernhard Schlink

“I wanted reality to drive out the clichés.”

— Bernhard Schlink

“Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?”

— Bernhard 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…

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

“I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Acostumei-me a uma atitude debochada, superior, mostrando-me como alguém a quem nada afetava, abalava, desesperava.”

— Bernhard Schlink

“Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life…

— Bernhard Schlink

We make our own truths and lies…Truths are often lies and lies truths...

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

“As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must…

— Bernhard Schlink

“It’s hard to guess ages when you’re not that old yourself and won’t be anytime soon. من الصعب تخمين عمرٍ ما دون أن تكون تجاوزته أو أوشكت على ذلك.”

— Bernhard Schlink

What I really like about law is that it's not an endless discourse like history or philosophy. In law, there comes a…

— Bernhard Schlink

What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is…

— Bernhard Schlink

When we open ourselves you yourself to me and I myself to you, when we submerge you into me and I into…

— Bernhard Schlink

In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled freshed, freshly washed or of freshed laundry or fresh sweat…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Afinal eu sabia por experiência própria que a vergonha nos força a ter um comportamento esquivo, defensivo, a ocultar e a simular…

— Bernhard Schlink

I certainly know German colleagues in the US who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Waking from a bad dream does not necessarily console you. It can also make you fully aware of the horror you just…

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

I took all the blame. I admitted mistakes I hadn't made, intentions I'd never had. Whenever she turned cold and hard, I…

— Bernhard Schlink

“The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier…

— Bernhard Schlink

Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him. The dog you take for…

— Bernhard Schlink

“People ask all the time what I learned in the camps. But the camps weren’t therapy. What do you think these places…

— Bernhard Schlink

It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Since our nights together on that trip, I had longed every night to feel her next to me, to curl up against…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him?…

— Bernhard Schlink

I didn't like the way I looked, the way I dressed and moved, what I achieved and what I felt I was…

— Bernhard Schlink

“I had no one to point at. Certainly not my parents, because I had nothing to accuse them of. The zeal for…

— Bernhard Schlink

Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of…

— Bernhard Schlink

“To me it was obvious that experimental literature was experimenting on the reader, and Hanna didn't need that and neither did I.”

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

“I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture it's beauty.”

— Bernhard Schlink

“We did not have a world that we shared; she gave me the space in her life that she wanted me to…

— Bernhard Schlink

“Weil die Wahrheit dessen, was man redet, das ist, was man tut, kann man das Reden auch lassen.”

— Bernhard Schlink

“When did you know you were going to be a writer? I knew it when I was young, I forgot it in…

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink

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

— Bernhard Schlink