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. — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of… — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come… — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
I have often supported Israel, I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its… — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated. — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
“You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done, proclaim, or let someone else proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solved the space-time problem. Or you can declare at… — Gunter Grass Copy Share
There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we'd all been weaned too soon. — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing… — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts ... chairs, bones, and… — Gunter Grass Copy Share Image
Love That’s it: The cashless commerce. The blanket always too short. The loose connexion. To search behind the horizon. To brush fallen leaves with four shoes and in one’s mind to rub bare feet. To let and rent hearts; or in a room with shower and mirror, in a hired car, bonnet facing the moon, wherever innocence stops and burns… — Gunter Grass Copy Share
“They had tried doing it by themselves in her room with a cheap onion, but it wasn't the same. You needed an audience. It… — Günter Grass Copy Share Image
