If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.