Gunter Grass
Gunter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grasswas a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 October 1927
CountryGermany
future growth statistics
We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.
rats has-beens
Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.
running player joy
We dance for the pure joy of it. In the kitchen to the record player. Because we've got it in us. All over ... it's not just in the legs. It comes from inside and runs all through you. In waves. From down below to up above. All the way to the scalp.
butterfly watches dangerous
It's dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.
moving men trying
Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your man of action and bashes in the hothouse windows.
death numbers statistics
In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.
children boys years
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.
writing sometimes drawers
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.
growth needs chance
In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.
hurt lying different
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.
writing drawing age
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.
kissing years giving
I wept when the muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded by tears I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Sapse Cemetery.
communication loss expression
Removed from its more restrictive sense, masturbation has become an expression for everything that has proved, for lack of human contact, to be void of meaning. We have communication problems, suffer from egocentrism and narcissism, are frustrated by information glut and loss of environment; we stagnate despite the rising GNP.
decision alive borders
Cemeteries have always had a lure for me. They are well kept, free from ambiguity, logical, virile, and alive. In cemeteries you can summon up courage and arrive at decisions, in cemeteries life takes on distinct contours -- I am not referring to the borders of the graves -- and if you will, a meaning.