Gunter Grass

Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass…

— Gunter Grass

Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

— Gunter Grass

If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy…

— Gunter Grass

I have often supported Israel, I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace…

— Gunter Grass

Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.

— Gunter Grass

“You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern,…

— Gunter Grass

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

— Gunter Grass

Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing…

— Gunter Grass

Art is hard for a puritan to understand.

— Gunter Grass

What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts ... chairs,…

— Gunter Grass

Love That’s it: The cashless commerce. The blanket always too short. The loose connexion. To search behind the horizon. To brush fallen…

— Gunter Grass

“They had tried doing it by themselves in her room with a cheap onion, but it wasn't the same. You needed an…

— Günter Grass

[To be an artist,] this desire to conquer all with images.

— Gunter Grass

After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its…

— Gunter Grass

“Suppose you're teaching math. You assume that parallel lines meet at infinity. You'll admit that adds up to something like transcendence.”

— Günter Grass

I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called 'Death of Wood' about one such world,…

— Gunter Grass

Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your…

— Gunter Grass

Cemeteries have always had a lure for me. They are well kept, free from ambiguity, logical, virile, and alive. In cemeteries you…

— Gunter Grass

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

— 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…

— Gunter Grass

How easily the routine of sin establishes itself.

— Gunter Grass

On sorrow floats laughter.

— Gunter Grass

“my incessantly syllable-excreting mind”

— Günter Grass

“We struck up a conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow and sticking to the most frivolous topics.…

— Günter Grass

What I do is sometimes - at least in Germany - met with wounding campaigns. I always face the question: should I…

— Gunter Grass