Even in West Germany in the beginning, people wanted a kind of socialism.

I certainly hoped that in the Eastern part of Germany, what was just beginning to be called the German Democratic Republic, you would develop a system of socialism with freedom and democracy.

I was in psychological warfare in World War II, so I know psychological warfare when I see it.

The Wall was the actual symbol of a defeat, of inferiority.

If you live in a system that is suppressive, you don't walk upright, you always go with your head down.

Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.

A great number of people in the East German parts had been Nazis, so the change of mind was not altogether there.

A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany.

We certainly hoped perestroika would win out and that there would be changes. We knew all along that socialism could flourish only with a certain amount of freedom and democracy.

I not only saw the possibility of nuclear war, I feared it very much. If they started a military conflagration, it would automatically lead to nuclear warfare.

You must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.

Not by prayers alone will a captive be freed, but by another man’s prayers matched by his deeds.

Messy love is better than none.I guess. I'm no authorityon sane living.

I absolutely hate the way the United States glorifies its military and its wars. Real heroes fight for peace.

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer.

It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.

Golf is an expensive way to make yourself miserable.