Horst Koehler

After a Polish Pope, whose country was first to be invaded by the Germans in World War Two, we now have someone from the generation drafted at the close of the war.

Germany must be a country which generates political ideas and leadership, which is capable of compromise, which is sovereign and yet knows that it needs its partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

If we know where we want to go, then even a stony road is bearable.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.