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

In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war.

And also, of course, I knew that the German people, they're one, and would tend to consider themselves as one; and therefore they would consider the Wall as an enforced imprisonment. And I was right in thinking that way.

I defended myself at the first opportunity I had, which was a meeting of writers in which I proved that Honecker had based his whole attack.

These were the things that the government supplied you with - in turn, of course, demanding obedience. But you must not imagine that it was a constant feeling of outrage that was in the minds of people and the hearts of people.

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 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.