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
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.
crowds bigger-than-life bigger
Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.
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.
art compromise life-is
Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises.
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.
years volunteer criminals
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.
art puritan irrational
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.
seductive nonsense found
I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense.
generations socialism grew
I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray.
triumph satan virtue
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?
thinking doors names
...if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us...
jesus crosses ifs
If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.
memories trying together
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.
wicked genius vain
You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.