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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

You must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.