Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I can only write a book like 'The Tin Drum' or 'From the Diary of a Snail' at a special period of my life. The books came about because of how I felt and thought at the time. "
Gunter Grass
Life
Time
Like
Related Quotes:
" Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work. "
Gunter Grass
Prose
Stand
Work
" 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? "
Gunter Grass
War
American
Side
" For me, writing, drawing, and political activism are three separate pursuits; each has its own intensity. I happen to be especially attuned to and engaged with the society in which I live. Both my writing and my drawing are invariably mixed up with politics, whether I want them to be or not. "
Gunter Grass
Writing
Live
Me
" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Morning
Good
Breakfast
" People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later they seem to him alien and strange. I am trying to decipher that child. Sometimes he is a stranger to me. When you think about when you were 14, don't you feel a certain alienation? "
Gunter Grass
Time
Me
I Am
" I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise. "
Gunter Grass
Been
Children
Always
" Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises. "
Gunter Grass
Art
Full
Life
" 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
" I remember when I was writing 'The Tin Drum,' I had the totally misguided idea of giving Oskar Matzerath a sister, and he just wouldn't have it. There was no space for a sister, yet I had the character of the sister in my head. In fact I used her in later novels, in 'Cat and Mouse' and 'Dog Years,' Tulla Pokriski. "
Gunter Grass
Dog
Space
Writing
" No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. "
Gunter Grass
No Idea
Art
Even
" I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense. "
Gunter Grass
Apt
Words
Seductive
" 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
" I had an uncle who was a postal official at the Polish post office in Gdansk. He was one of the defenders of the Polish postal service and, after it capitulated, was shot by the Germans under the provisions of martial law. Suddenly he was no longer a member of the family, and we were no longer allowed to play with his children. "
Gunter Grass
Children
Service
Uncle
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place. "
Gunter Grass
Future
Statistics
Place
" 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
" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Drawing
Noise
Writing
" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Born
Want
Circumstances
" As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things. "
Gunter Grass
Things
Mother
Liar
" 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
Up
Away
Church
" 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
" Even bad books are books and therefore sacred. "
Gunter Grass
Sacred
Books
Bad
" 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
" Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in. "
Gunter Grass
World
Nothing
Information
" 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
" 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
" My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grimm's fairy tales. I even saw a theater production of 'Tom Thumb' during Advent at the State Theater in Danzig, which my mother took me to see. "
Gunter Grass
Me
Mother
Childhood