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
hands fists left-hand
...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
progress tails coins
I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next... of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.
lying grateful believe
Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.
weed running flower
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.
country thinking abuse
I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.
crush art passion
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.
class feelings mind
Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.
men reason-why breastfeeding
There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we'd all been weaned too soon.
mother childhood thumbs
My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grimm's fairy tales. I even saw a theater production of 'Tom Thumb' during Advent at the State Theater in Danzig, which my mother took me to see.
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.
marriage faithful
I am not faithful but I am attached.
rats has-beens
Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.
routine sin
How easily the routine of sin establishes itself.
skins germany campaigns
What I do is sometimes - at least in Germany - met with wounding campaigns. I always face the question: should I grow myself a thick skin and ignore it, or should I let myself be wounded? I've decided to be wounded, since, if I grew a thick skin, there are other things I wouldn't feel any more.