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" 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
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" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Writing
Crime
Always
" Even bad books are books and therefore sacred. "
Gunter Grass
Sacred
Books
Bad
" 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
" As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things. "
Gunter Grass
Things
Mother
Liar
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise. "
Gunter Grass
Been
Children
Always
" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Good
Writing
Work
" Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work. "
Gunter Grass
Prose
Stand
Work
" Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper. "
Gunter Grass
Passion
Accusation
Art
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open. "
Gunter Grass
Keep
Mouth
Job
" How did it happen that an enlightened country like Germany was pulled into Nazism? That question has occupied me since 'The Tin Drum,' my first book. The story also shows that we can never know how a person's life will unfold; there is no guarantee that a person will do what is right and avoid what is not right. "
Gunter Grass
Life
Me
Story
" 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