Gunter Grass quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Gunter Grass on Wise Famous Quotes.

So rode the squadrons out against the grey steel foe, adding another dash of red to the sunset glow.

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.

When the young woman
leans over the sky,
about to water the flowers as well as the weeds,
her white front splits open
until her milk runs.

In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.

[To be an artist,] this desire to conquer all with images.

What makes books - and with them writers - so dangerous that church and state, politburos and the mass media feel the need to oppose them?

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

You American intellectuals - you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!

They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.

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

I am not faithful but I am attached.

Ignore the misery. Custom invites you to ignore the misery.
SHOW YOUR TONGUE

And so Yorick did not become a good citizen, but a Hamlet, a fool.

Thus my task was destruction.

Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.

Students who don't want to get anywhere are sure to get somewhere.

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.

Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!

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

An empty bus hurtles through the starry night
Perhaps the driver is singing
and happy because he sings.

The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists.

Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

It's dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.

[America is] the land where people find whatever they have lost.

Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss.

You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.

Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises.

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

Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.

There is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perhaps all happiness is an ersatz for happiness.

There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we'd all been weaned too soon.

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

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.

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.

As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.

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.

Art is hard for a puritan to understand.

Mahlke couldn't joke. He sometimes tried. But everything he did, touched or said, became solemn, significant, monumental;

Stuffed cats are able to creep more convincingly than live ones.

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

I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise.

One of the mistakes the Germans made ... was that they were not brave enough to be afraid.

Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.

I remain restless and dissatisfied; what I knot with my right hand, I undo with my left, what my left hand creates, my right fist shatters

On sorrow floats laughter.

Who can deny that the environment has been destroyed?

I expected more from literature than from real, naked life.

If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.

How easily the routine of sin establishes itself.

Once upon a time there was a musician who slew his four cats, stuffed them in a garbage can, left the building, and went to visit friends.

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

my incessantly syllable-excreting mind

An entire gullible nation believed faithfully in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the Gasman.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

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

Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.

When Satan's not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn't even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?

Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work.

Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.

My pride in Joachim Mahlke was as sweet as chocolate creams.

Suppose you're teaching math. You assume that parallel lines meet at infinity. You'll admit that adds up to something like transcendence.