Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Bernhard Schlink

Quote by Bernhard Schlink

“At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me 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.”

Quote by Bernhard Schlink

Work

The Reader

In this poignant narrative, a young man falls in love with an older woman, who remains enigmatic until the novel's climax. The story delves into the complexities of human relationships and the impact of historical events on individual lives. more

Author

Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink

German writer known for his novel 'The Reader'. Born on July 6, 1944, Bernhard Schlink's works often explore themes of morality, history, and memory. more

You May Also Like

“But I guess you have to get cracked wide open and exposed raw to become your best self. Nothing is transformed that is not discovered or exposed. And we are all constant imperfection in a state of evolution until we leave this place. It seems important to acknowledge that none of us, not even the greatest gurus of our time, are completely transformed. It's a great unraveling across a lifetime that is only accessed by the cracks in our ever-present false selves.”

“Oversimplifying the cosmos just for a transaction of currency and holy spit, those heartless fucks with time to spare, with conceptual frameworks within the word becoming flesh once again upon remote islands our soul could never escape. So my question lies with my Spanish tongue, exploring the pitch black labyrinth where you listen to the deepest drums; hung on a single string wrapping up my skin in dead languages. Oversimplifying the 21st century with a single search, the awakening hatred boiling the oceans and cities; diving below the surface, witnessing underwater queens and goddesses drenched in my lovers scent and deadly sex untouched by any depth.”

“It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.”

“You try to separate yourselves from history. You pretend its ugliness could never happen where you are. But it can...and it does, when normal people, en mass, allow worse and worse shit to go down because either they're too ignorant to understand or they're being corrupted by the powers that control the country. That's how this starts, that's how it gets too far. PLEASE see the signs. Please. This is human nature...to miss the boat out of fear or anger about others "taking what's ours" and so we allow (or cheer on) heinousness one step at a time until, before you know it, you're living in a nightmare of epic proportions and history sees you as the villain you became. DON'T BECOME A VILLAIN. BE THE VOICE THAT BREAKS THE INSANITY OPEN.”