You cannot spend two thousand years trying to understand God and then simply abandon the question and declare that we’re not interested in it anymore.

- Martin Walser

Those who use language and have nothing but language to express themselves live in a cage that cannot feel comfortable.

- Martin Walser

Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and …

- Martin Walser

I believe that the most important condition for faith is sensitivity to beauty.

- Martin Walser

It is only true love when you have no choice. Love is the most highly valued disease that is identified by the symptom of You-can´t-help-it.

- Martin Walser

If you cannot live without justification, you cannot live; period. And the path towards it is the path of language.

- Martin Walser

Everything direct is positive, everything indirect is negative.

- Martin Walser

Language corresponds only to itself. Intellectuals suffer from that. And once you begin to question language, you cannot stop at studying linguistics…

- Martin Walser

Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat …

- Martin Walser