Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlinkis a German lawyer and writer...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth6 July 1944
CountryGermany
beautiful dark doe
why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
children thinking answers
I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers.
believe fall guilt
What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?
beautiful memories sadness
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?
too-late late knows
Or is there no such thing as 'too late'? Is there only 'late' and is 'late' always better than 'never'? I don't know.
answers ifs chests
I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.
lying truth-and-lies lies-truth
We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...
memories cities way
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?
children parent done
...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.
alive layers matter
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.
memories sometimes stay-true
Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..
thinking long feeling-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.
book law lawyer
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?
seductive awkward world
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