Günter Grass > Quotes

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Because men
are killing the forests
the fairy tales are running away.
The spindle doesn't know
whom to prick,
the little girl's hands
that her father has chopped off,
haven't a single tree to catch hold of,
the third wish remains unspoken.
King Thrushbeard no longer owns one thing.
Children can no longer get lost.
The number seven means no more than exactly seven.
Because men have killed the forests,
the fairy tales are trotting off to the cities
and end badly.”
― Gunter Grass, Rat

“Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.”
― Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum

“Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.”
― Günter Grass

“You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“...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”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“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.”
― Gunter Grass

“If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.”
― Gunter Grass

“After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything - and everyone - is fair game.”
― Günter Grass

“When Satan's not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn't even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“And when the sun goes down and the mood comes upon me, I'll watch the play of the colors on the water, yield to the fleetly dissolving images, and turn into pure feeling, all soft and nice.... ”
― Günter Grass, My Century

“...if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us...”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“What did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they could cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away. The rain came. The dew. Oskar has a vision of floodgates opening. Of dams bursting in the spring floods. What is the name of that river that overflows every spring and the government does nothing to stop it?”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Thus my task was destruction.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“An empty bus hurtles through the starry night
Perhaps the driver is singing
and happy because he sings.”
― Gunter Grass

“...there is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perhaps all happiness is an ersatz for happiness.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“On sorrow floats laughter.”
― Gunter Grass

“We struck up a conversation, but took pains to keep to small talk at first. We touched on the most trivial of topics: I asked if he thought the fate of man was unalterable. He thought it was.”
― 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 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 its programme,
the word in falsetto sounds
different and new each time.

Today, in front of a box office not yet open,
hand in hand crackled
the hangdog old man and the dainty old woman.
The film promised love.”
― Günter Grass

“We were convinced that she looked on with indifference if she noticed us at all. Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn't God in His heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coathanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Mamá sabía ser alegre. Mamá sabía ser temerosa. Mamá sabía olvidar fácilmente. Y, sin embargo tenía buena memoria. Mamá me daba con la puerta en la narices, y sin embargo, me admitía en su baño. A veces mamá se me perdía, pero su instinto me encontraba. Cuando yo rompía vidrios, mamá ponía la masilla. A veces se instalaba en el error, aunque a su alrededor hubiera sillas suficientes. Aun cuando se encerraba en sí misma, para mí siempre estaba abierta. Temía las corrientes de aire y sin embargo no paraba de levantar el viento. Gastaba, y no le gustaba pagar impuestos. Yo era el revés de su medalla. Cuando mamá jugaba corazones ganaba siempre. ”
― Günter Grass, El Tambor De Hojalata

“We struck up a conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow and sticking to the most frivolous topics. Did he, I asked, believe in predestination? He did. Did he believe that all men were doomed to die? Yes, he felt certain that all men would absolutely have to die, but he was less sure that all men had to be born...”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“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 was so much easier to cry in company. It gave you a real sense of brotherhood in sorrow when to the right and left of you and in the gallery overhead your fellow students were all crying their hearts out.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Once upon a time there was a musician who slew his four cats, stuffed them in a garbage can, left the building, and went to visit friends.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age of three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter's trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this day my thirtieth birthday and still afraid of the Black Witch.”
― Gunter Grass

“I've also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Einerseits geben Wörter Sinn, andererseits sind sie tauglich, Unsinn zu stiften. Wörter können heilsam oder verletzend sein. Das Wort als Waffe. Sich spreizende, auftrumpfende, mit Bedeutung gemästete Wörter. Manche sind Zungenbrecher, andere lassen erkennen, verschleiern, leugnen ab, decken zu oder auf. Oft liegen winzige Wahrheiten unter Wortlawinen begraben. Aus Wortstreit entspringen Schimpfwörter. Flüche, Beschwörungen, Zaubersprüche bannen, rufen herbei, lassen wahre Wunder geschehen.”
― Günter Grass, Grimms Wörter. Eine Liebeserklärung

“I’ve also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes. All that may be true. But as far as I and my keeper Bruno are concerned, I beg to state that we are both heroes, quite different heroes, he behind his peephole, I in front of it; and that when he opens the door, the two of us, for all our friendship and loneliness, are still far from being some nameless mass devoid of heroes.”
― Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum