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

People in the East looked toward the West with longing. They would have liked to have the same comforts, the same goods, the same chances. They saw a system that demanded of them sacrifices with nothing but promises for the future.

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 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.

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.

The idea of a socialism with a human face was something that I absolutely could support, because it was my idea from the very first.