Quotes by Gunter Grass

“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.”

“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 p...”

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

“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 strang...”

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

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

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

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

“An empty bus hurtles through the starry nightPerhaps the driver is singingand happy because he sings.”

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.”

“When Jan was called up to service a fourth time...my mother waited outside...the two of them were convinced that this time Jan would have to go, that they would surely send him off to cure his aili...”

“Three times Jan had been called to the colours (the army), but each time had been deferred because of his deplorable physical condition..when every male who could stand halfway erect was being ship...”

“Gregor was a real drinker..he didn't drink because he was sad..(or) cheerful. He drank because he was a thorough man, who like to get to the bottom of things, of bottles as well as everything else.”

“For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourt...”

“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.”

“They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.”

“When the young womanleans over the sky,about to water the flowers as well as the weeds,her white front splits openuntil her milk runs.”

“...my pride in Joachim Mahlke was as sweet as chocolate creams.”

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

“After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything - and every...”