Home / Authors / Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass Quotes

Novelist

German novelist, poet, playwright, and painter. Known for his unique literary style and profound reflections on German history. His works include 'The Tin Drum' and 'Cat and Mouse', among others.

Filter quotes by topic

All Ifs Writing Knows Men Years Art Art Is Children Feels Humans

Famous Gunter Grass Quotes

“It's dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.”

Watches Plans Dangerous Butterfly Staggering

Author:Gunter Grass

“How easily the routine of sin establishes itself.”

Author:Gunter Grass

“Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. It's not God in his heaven who sees everything. A kitchen chair, a clothes hanger, a half-filled ashtray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can serve perfectly well as an unforgetting witness to our every deed.”

Knows Humans Wells Today Heaven Memories Human Beings Half Clothes All Things Filled Deeds Witness Kitchen Chairs Unseen Hangers Replica Ashtrays

Author:Gunter Grass

“Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises.”

Art Life Is Art Is Compromise Uncompromising

Author:Gunter Grass

“Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always - one had only to dig - be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.”

Men Long Left Known Ultimate Lays Refuse Pursuit Quests Garbage Ultimate Truth Alone Life

Author:Gunter Grass

“If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.”

Ifs Age Consciousness Principles Conflict Absolutes Busy Dawn Melancholy Leisure Utopia Modernism Utopian

Author:Gunter Grass

“The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists.”

Men Stills Poverty Forever Mystery Fields India Bent Rice Oxen Amazing Man

Author:Gunter Grass

“What makes books - and with them writers - so dangerous that church and state, politburos and the mass media feel the need to oppose them?”

Needs Feels Book States Church Media Dangerous Mass Church And State Mass Media

Author:Gunter Grass

“So I have no grounds to complain; on the contrary, writers should consider the condition of permanent controversiality to be invigorating, part of the risk envolved in choosing the profesión. It is a fact of life that writers have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of the high and mighty. That is what makes the history of literature analogous to the development and refinement of censorship.”

Should Facts Literature Pleasure Risk Conditions Development Dues Contrary Complaining Permanent Consideration Censorship Soup Spit Facts Of Life Refinement Invigorating

Author:Gunter Grass

“I am not faithful but I am attached.”

Marriage Faithful

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Giving Years Tears Terrible Kissing Sand Buried Rejected Muse Bent Cemetery Blinded Branded

Author:Gunter Grass

“I have often supported Israel, I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its neighbours.”

Want Country Lasts Israel Neighbour Finding Peace

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Writing Age Imagine Needed Drawing Noise

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Persons Different Helping Lying Hurt Truth Is Protect Oneself Boring Harm

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Knows Writing Sometimes Capable Decades Drawers

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Needs Feels Language Growth Chance Ought Agree Permit Threatening Jacob New Words Grimm

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

States Mother Saws Childhood Grew Grew Up Theater Productions Tales Fairy Fairy Tale Toms Thumbs Jacob Advent Grimm

Author:Gunter Grass

“There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we'd all been weaned too soon.”

Ifs Men Reason Reason Why Breasts Feeding Breastfeeding

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Mind States Feelings Life Is Individual Causes Class Despair Mass Privilege Productions Exception Melancholy Phenomenon State Of Mind Quota Class Privilege

Author:Gunter Grass

“Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.”

World Information Remains Volume Sheer Concealed

Author:Gunter Grass

“The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous.”

Thinking Writing Mind Humans Earth One Thing Bigger Globes Monstrous Containing

Author:Gunter Grass

“Students who don't want to get anywhere are sure to get somewhere.”

Want Students Achievement

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Men Trying Action Moving Window Active Resignation Bash

Author:Gunter Grass

“One of the mistakes the Germans made ... was that they were not brave enough to be afraid.”

Made Enough Fear Mistake Brave

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Years Wells Children Wanted Courses Boys Judging Volunteer Membership Idiotic Submarines Judging Myself

Author:Gunter Grass

“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.”

Ifs Feels Should Sometimes Faces Grows Grew Mets Decided Skins Campaigns Germany Thick Should I Wounded Thick Skin

Author:Gunter Grass

“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 provisions of martial law. Suddenly he was no longer a member of the family, and we were no longer allowed to play with his children.”

Children Play Law Members Office Shots Posts Officials Uncles Polish Provision Defenders Post Office Postal Service Martial Law

Author:Gunter Grass

“I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years.”

Needs Writing Years Firsts Felt Crime Involved One Day Overcoming Autobiography Aversion

Author:Gunter Grass

About the Author

Born: October 16, 1927
Died: April 13, 2015
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 78

Related Topics

Ifs Writing Knows Men Years Art Art Is Children Feels Humans

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Similar Authors

Stephen KingBrowse related quotes
Joyce Carol OatesBrowse related quotes
Anton ChekhovBrowse related quotes
William FaulknerBrowse related quotes
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheBrowse related quotes
Madeleine L'EngleBrowse related quotes
W. H. AudenBrowse related quotes
Neil GaimanBrowse related quotes
Jorge Luis BorgesBrowse related quotes
Anna QuindlenBrowse related quotes