The Reader Quotes

“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.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“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”
― Bernhard Schlink

“A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, is a person with an impediment: he can speak much but he will say little, because his vocabulary is deficient in the means for self-expression.

This is not only a verbal limitation. It represents also a limitation in intellect and imagination. It is a poverty of thought, for the simple reason that ideas, the concepts through which we grasp the secrets of our condition, do not exist apart from words.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa

“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.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“The geological 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.”
― Bernard Schlink

“Något av det viktigaste i all konst: att överlåta en anständig del åt läsaren, betraktaren, den medverkande. Det ska finnas en tom plats vid det dukade bordet. Den är hans.”
― Gunnar Ekelöf

“There are, however, at least two varieties of imagination in the reader's case. So let us see which one of the two is the right one to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature. ... This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use.

So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

“Los libros son máquinas del tiempo y rompecabezas y llaves de cerrojos que ni siquiera sabíamos que existían en lo profundo de nuestro corazón.”
― Traci Chee, The Reader

“People ask all the time what I learned in the camps. But the camps weren’t therapy. What do you think these places were? Universities? We didn’t go there to learn. One becomes very clear about these things. What are you asking for? Forgiveness for her? Or do you just want to feel better yourself? My advice, go to the theatre, if you want catharsis, please. Go to literature. Don't go to the camps. Nothing comes out of the camps. Nothing.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Whom then to love? Whom to have faith in?
Who can there be who won’t betray?
Who’ll judge a deed or disputation
Obligingly by what we say?
Who’ll not bestrew our path with slander?
Who’ll cosset us with care and candour?
Oh, ineffectual phantom seeker
You waste your energy in vain:
Love your own self, be your own man,
My worthy, venerable reader!
A worthwhile object: surely who
Could be more lovable than you?”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Reading is not passive. It is only when the reader brings his/her own experiences to the work and breathes life into the author’s words that they consummate the relationship and together bring the story to life.”
― Chuck Miceli, Amanda's Room

“Spring lets its blue banner flutter through the air again.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader