Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open. "
Gunter Grass
Keep
Mouth
Job
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Gunter Grass
Economic
Foundation
Identity
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss. "
Gunter Grass
Something
Only
Homeland
" 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
" 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
" Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work. "
Gunter Grass
Prose
Stand
Work
" 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
" 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 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
Me
Argument
Country
" 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
" 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 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
" 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 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 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
" 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
" 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