Sam-VM все записи автора Bernhard Schlink – The Reader

It hard to guess ages when you're not that old yourself and won't be anytime soon.

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I knew none of this - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.

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They would lecture me with loving concern, which was worse than being scolded.

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But today I can recognize that events back then were part of a life-long pattern in which thinking and doing have either come together or failed to come together - I think, I reach a conclusion, it turn the conclusion into a decision, and then I discover that acting on the decision is something else entirely, and that doing so may proceed from the decision, but then again it may not.

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But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided. It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions.

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

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Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regarding myself - confidence had nothing to do with success; every goal I set myself, every recognition I craved made anything I actually did seem partly by comparison, and whether I experienced it a failure or triumph was utterly depend on my mood.

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From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassment and sources of irritation. But you and who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.

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- Do you not want to talk about it, or is it that you want to but you don't know how?

Did I not want to, or didn't I know how? I didn't know the answer.

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I moved through the world as if it had nothing to do with me nor I with it.

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But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me whenever 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?

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I remember my grandfather during one of my last visits before his death; he wanted to bless me, and I told him I didn't believe in any of that and didn't want it. It is hard for me to that I felt good about behaving like that. I also remember that the smallest gesture of affection would bring a lump to my throat, whether it was directed at me or at someone else.

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What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

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I had the good feeling all that winter that I belonged and that I was at peace with myself about what I was doing and the people with whom I was doing it.

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Whenever he found a statement either obstructionist or annoying, he took off his glasses, stared at the speaker with a blank-short-sighted gaze, frowned, and either ignored the statement altogether or began with "So you mean" or "So what you're trying to say is" and then repeated what had been said in a way as to leave no doubt that he had no desire to deal with it and that trying to compel him to do so would be pointless.

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There are matters one simply cannot get drawn into, that one must distance oneself from, if the price is not life and limb.

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I had to read the book in English an unfamiliar and laborious exercise at the time. And as always, the alien language, unmastered and struggled over, created a strange concatenation of distance and immediacy. I worked through the book with particular thoroughness and yet did not make it my own. I remained as alien as the language itself.

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However, the fact that I had not driven her away did not change the fact that I had betrayed her. So I was still guilty. And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.

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But with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people's views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.

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I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna's crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding. But even as I wanted to understand Hanna, failing to understand her meant betraying her all over again I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.

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But she looked straight ahead and through everything. A proud, wounded, lost, and infinitely tired look. A look that wished to see nothing and no one.

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Knowing what was going on did not mean taking part.

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But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible.

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

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

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How could the Greeks, who knew that one never enters the same river twice; believe in homecoming?

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I couldn't sleep for more than a few hours; I would lie awake, and when I switched on the light and picked up a book, my eyes closed, and when I put the book down an turned off the light, I was wide awake again.

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I found at first that it was hard to take in as much when I read aloud as when I read silently to myself. But that changed. The disadvantage of reading aloud remained te the fact that it took longer. But books read aloud also stayed long in my memory.

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Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late", and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.

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I operated too much through my head and not enough through my heart.

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You can depend on it, if there are organizations for something, then there are Jewish organization for it.

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I was astonished at how much older literature can actually be read as if it were contemporary; to anyone ignorant to see ways of life in earlier times simply as ways of life in foreign countries.

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