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

- Bernhard Schlink

People who commit monstrous crimes are not necessarily monsters. If they were, things would be easy. But they aren't and it is one of the experiences…

- Bernhard Schlink

I can't say I'm thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn't want …

- Bernhard Schlink

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

- Bernhard Schlink

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

- Bernhard Schlink

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

- Bernhard Schlink

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worth…

- Bernhard Schlink

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

- Bernhard Schlink

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 w…

- Bernhard Schlink