A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany.

I disapproved of the fact that the government here refused to adopt the few reforms that Gorbachev put over in the field of media and the field of culture.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.