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" Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises. "
Gunter Grass
Art
Full
Life
Related Quotes:
" What I do is sometimes - at least in Germany - met with wounding campaigns. I always face the question: should I grow myself a thick skin and ignore it, or should I let myself be wounded? I've decided to be wounded, since, if I grew a thick skin, there are other things I wouldn't feel any more. "
Gunter Grass
Feel
Skin
Myself
" Auschwitz speaks against even a right to self-determination that is enjoyed by all other peoples because one of the preconditions for the horror, besides other, older urges, was a strong and united Germany. "
Gunter Grass
Right
Strong
Horror
" Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early. "
Gunter Grass
Grateful
I Am
Early
" With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing. "
Gunter Grass
I Am
Writing
Turn
" My sister and I did not have our own rooms, or even a place to ourselves. In the living room, beyond the two windows, was a little corner where my books were kept, and other thing - my watercolors and so on. Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. "
Gunter Grass
Early
Windows
Sister
" Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand. "
Gunter Grass
Understand
Hard
Same
" Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work. "
Gunter Grass
Prose
Stand
Work
" I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise. "
Gunter Grass
Been
Children
Always
" I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called 'Death of Wood' about one such world, on the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and what was then still the German Democratic Republic. "
Gunter Grass
Dying
Death
Border
" If we take into account the existence of our planet, we have to recognise that we are guests that spend a short and very determined period in this world, and all we leave behind is nuclear waste. "
Gunter Grass
Behind
Leave
Existence
" Memory likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needlessly. Memory contradicts itself; pedant that it is, it will have its way. "
Gunter Grass
Dress
Will
Way
" Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss. "
Gunter Grass
Something
Only
Homeland
" I have often supported Israel, I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its neighbours. "
Gunter Grass
Country
Want
Peace
" A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure. "
Gunter Grass
Face
Reality
Style
" If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness. "
Gunter Grass
Utopia
Age
Work
" We cannot get by Auschwitz. We should not even try, as great as the temptation is, because Auschwitz belongs to us, is branded into our history, and - to our benefit! - has made possible an insight that could be summarized as, 'Now we finally know ourselves.' "
Gunter Grass
Try
Great
History
" In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself. "
Gunter Grass
Changes
Chance
Words
" When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted. "
Gunter Grass
Writing
Book
Done
" No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. "
Gunter Grass
No Idea
Art
Even
" Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them. "
Gunter Grass
You
Writing
Know
" I think it's a shame that we have 'Bild' like you have the 'Sun'. Now serious newspapers like 'FAZ' and 'Spiegel' use a bit of the tone of 'Bild.' This is terrible. "
Gunter Grass
Shame
Serious
Now
" Over the years, I had something in principle against autobiographical writing altogether because memory plays tricks on us, and we also tend to reinvent ourselves. But there comes an age when one begins to observe life, and there are things that need time to mature, also in terms of literary form. "
Gunter Grass
Memory
Life
Time
" I catch myself judging myself as that 13-year-old boy, who, of course, rightfully points out that he is only a child. And my membership - well, I was drafted into the Waffen-SS and didn't exactly volunteer, which was just as idiotic. I wanted to be on the submarines and then ended up with the Waffen-SS. "
Gunter Grass
Myself
Volunteer
Boy
" Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that. "
Gunter Grass
Help
Hurt
Truth Is
" I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray. "
Gunter Grass
Generation
Led
National
" Our minds aren't bound by a chronological corset. When thinking and dreaming, past, present and future are mixed up. That's also possible for a writer. "
Gunter Grass
Thinking
Future
Minds
" Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper. "
Gunter Grass
Passion
Accusation
Art
" Everybody knows how fallible memory can sometimes be. You remember certain fragments precisely, but as soon as you try to join the fragments together, for a story, there is a certain - not falsification, but a shifting. "
Gunter Grass
Story
Together
You
" Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas. "
Gunter Grass
Become
Class
Life
" I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit. "
Gunter Grass
Year
Know
Group