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.

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

And of course, in West Germany, they made every effort that people who came from the East would get jobs and would get a comfortable existence. That was part of the Cold War - and part of the winning side of the Cold War.

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

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.

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

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.