[b]Bernhard Schlink
Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there’s an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist - do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn’t admit to being left handed - do you tell the judge what’s going on? Imagine he’s gay, and could not have committed the crime because he’s gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn’t a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay — just imagine that he is.[/b]
Imagine instead that you are.
The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile.
If only from the cradle to the grave.
When she had fallen asleep on me, and the saw in the yard was quiet, and a blackbird was singing as the colors of things in the kitchen dimmed until nothing remained of them but lighter and darker shades of gray, I was completely happy.
Gray works for me too.
The truth of what one says lies in what one does.
And ain’t that a bitch, he thought.
…why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
Just accept it and move on.
It is hard for me to imagine 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. Sometimes all it took was a scene in a movie. This juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity seemed suspicious even to me.
And yet genetically there it is.