[b]Bernhard Schlink
…So I stopped talking about it. There’s no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.[/b]
Of course it goes without saying: for better or for worse.
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
The belly of the beast and then some.
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.
Of course bearing it is hardly ever the point.
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?
My guess: Yes.
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.
True, if you don’t count the real world.
…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.
But he had known nothing of what she had done. At least in the movie.