I did not oppose unification, I knew unification would have to come, but not in the form in which it did come. There were two ways of doing it and they took it the radical way, the forceful way.

Today, when we live in a what is called Western democracy here... you're not taken seriously all the time. You can write what you want because nobody cares about it. But at that time, they cared very much about what you wrote, so that's an entirely different feeling.

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.

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

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

People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.

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.