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
memories sunset glasses
What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts ... chairs, bones, and sunsets too. What had long been forgotten rose to memory, floating on its back or stomach, with the help of the Vistula.
crowds bigger-than-life bigger
Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.
land america people
[America is] the land where people find whatever they have lost.
children thinking years
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?
bit newspapers tone
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.
democratic drawings poetry side work
Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work.
children
I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise.
brought catholic moved religion
I was brought up Catholic and know the stench of the Catholic Church. I moved away from religion early, but the impression remains.
art flowering stays
No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots.
bound future minds mixed possible present thinking
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.
artificial certain cultivated face including keeps literary plant test writer
A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure.
book books came diary felt life period special time tin
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.
border death democratic drawings drawn federal germany poisoned published republic seen
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.
fact giving later misguided remember space tin totally
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.