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

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.

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

A Western writer came up to me and said, how come nobody at this demonstration spoke of German unity? I told him, because it isn't on the agenda. People were interested in having another, better GDR, another, better socialism.

I was in psychological warfare in World War II, so I know psychological warfare when I see it.

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.