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" Everyone is born into a certain era. I wouldn't want to see anyone faced with the circumstances that prevailed at the time, when there were few or no alternatives. "

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" 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

" I don't believe in writing at night because it comes too easily. When I read it in the morning it's not good. I need daylight to begin. Between nine and ten o'clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music. "

" 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. "

" I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was brought up Catholic and know the stench of the Catholic Church. I moved away from religion early, but the impression remains. "

Gunter Grass

Away

Church

" Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age. "

" I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray. "

" Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand. "

" Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn. "

" The European Union arose on an economic foundation, and it turns out that even this is not a solid base. Cultural identity has been neglected. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage. "

Gunter Grass

Argument

Country

" No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. "

" The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years. "

" It is a wonderful thing in the process of writing when such paper characters are first sketched, and, when one is doing good work, from a certain point in time they come alive and start contradicting the author as well. "

" How do we prevent Iran developing an atomic bomb, when, on the American side, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not recognised as a war crime? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place. "

" Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early. "