Mara Delius

‘Journalists discussed the prospective disappearance of their newspapers as if they were watching their own funeral but not quite believing their eyes’

‘Strolling around Alexanderplatz one cold but sunny afternoon, I was surprised at just how trashy it is’

‘One can become American but one can never become English’

‘Germans longed for Olympic medals as validation, but were surprised at how London rose to the occasion’

‘A friend asked her editor for a pay rise. Surely, he replied, her husband was earning enough to support them both’

‘The seriousness of a left-wing movement in today’s Europe can be measured by its stance towards Israel’

‘I was fond of my father’s old friend Günter Grass. I’d like to think he knew better’

‘German intellectuals are fascinated by outsiders, especially tortured rebels like Heinrich von Kleist’

‘Their grandparents fled the Nazis, their parents boycotted all things German, but their children are flocking to Berlin’

‘Germans are obsessed with paying taxes – they are affronted by any state with little or not taxation – such as the British Virgin Islands’