List of Gunter Grass Quotes

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.

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.

Everyone Is Born Into A Certain Era. I Wouldn't Want To See Anyone Faced With The Circumstances That Prevailed At The Time, When There Were Few Or No Alternatives.

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.

What Does A River Like The Vistula Carry Away With It? Everything That Goes To Pieces: Wood, Glass, Pencils, Pacts ... Chairs, Bones, And Sunsets Too. What Had Long Been Forgotten Rose To Memory, Floating On Its Back Or Stomach, With The Help Of The Vistula.

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.

In Statistics, What Disappears Behind Rows Of Numbers Is Death.

Removed From Its More Restrictive Sense, Masturbation Has Become An Expression For Everything That Has Proved, For Lack Of Human Contact, To Be Void Of Meaning. We Have Communication Problems, Suffer From Egocentrism And Narcissism, Are Frustrated By Information Glut And Loss Of Environment; We Stagnate Despite The Rising Gnp.

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.

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.

[america Is] The Land Where People Find Whatever They Have Lost.

We Dance For The Pure Joy Of It. In The Kitchen To The Record Player. Because We've Got It In Us. All Over ... It's Not Just In The Legs. It Comes From Inside And Runs All Through You. In Waves. From Down Below To Up Above. All The Way To The Scalp.