Günter Grass > Quotes

“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.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

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

“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.”
― Günter Grass, Rat

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.”
― Günter Grass

“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

“I don't want you to sketch this cripple, this freak of nature, I want you to slaughter him, crucify him, to nail him to your paper with charcoal!”
― Günter 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

“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

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

“He was taking advantage of the brief lull in the battle to take a little nap, for do not all men, even heroes, need a refreshing little nap now and then?”
― Günter Grass

“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.”
― Günter 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

“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

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

“On sorrow floats laughter.”
― Günter Grass

“...sólo los auténticos perezosos son capaces de hacer inventos para ahorrar trabajo.”
― Günter Grass, El Tambor de Hojalata

“Sie hält nicht, was sie verspricht. Weder ist die ihre eingeschriebene soziale Verpflichtung des Eigentums Wirklichkeit geworden, noch ist jeder Bürger vor dem Gesetz gleich. Als sich nach dem Zerfall des anderen deutschen Staates Aussicht auf Einheit bot, wurde der Schlußartikel des Grundgesetzes, der im Fall möglicher Vereinigung beider Staaten vorschrieb, der gesamtdeutschen Bevölkerung eine neue Verfassung vorzulegen, gebeugt und später getilgt. Und seitdem das Verfassungsrecht auf Asyl beschnitten, nur noch Fragment ist, sind Abschiebehaft und gewaltsames Abschieben von Flüchtlingen tagtägliche Praxis; beschämend nicht nur für jeden, der sich noch immer Verfassungspatriot nennt”
― Günter Grass, Grimms Wörter: Eine Liebeserklärung

“Doch das sei abermals betont: angestoßen, politisch zu werden, hat mich nicht Willy Brandt, sondern der allerchristlichste Kanzler. Er, der sich aus Nächstenliebe den Kommentator der Rassengesetze, Hans Globke, als Staatssekretär hielt, er, dem das christliche Abendland nur bis zur Elbe reichte, er verdächtigte den Emigranten Brandt „alias Frahm“ unterschwellig des Landesverrats. Sein Christentum katholischer Machart gab ihm ein, uneheliche Herkunft als Makel anzuprangern. Konrad Adenauer war jedes Mittel recht, weshalb er immer noch als Staatsmann gilt.”
― Günter Grass, Grimms Wörter: Eine Liebeserklärung

“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

“Hoy ya sé que todo nos espía, que nada pasa inadvertido y que aun el papal pintado de las paredes tiene mejor memoria que los hombres. Y no es el buen Dios el que lo ve todo. No, una silla de cocina, una percha, ceniceros a medio llenar o la imagen de una mujer llamada Niobe bastan para proporcionar de todo acto un testimonio imperecedero.”
― Günter Grass, El Tambor de Hojalata

“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.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Behind all sorrows in the world Klepp saw a ravenous hunger; all human suffering, he believed, could be cured with a portion of blood sausage. What quantities of fresh blood sausage with rings of onion, washed down with beer, Oskar consumed in order to make his friend think his sorrow's name was hunger and not Sister Dorothy.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“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

“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

“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

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

“You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”
― Günter Grass

“So rode the squadrons out against the grey steel foe, adding another dash of red to the sunset glow.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

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

“Ignore the misery. Custom invites you to ignore the misery."
SHOW YOUR TONGUE”
― Günter 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.”
― Günter Grass

“But every time I shunned books, as scholars sometimes do, cursed them as verbal graveyards, and tried to make contact with the common folk, I ran up against the kids in our building and felt fortunate, after a few brushes with those little cannibals, to return to my reading in one piece.”
― Günter Grass

“I had a rage inside me and my rage was getting kittens.”
― Günter Grass, Cat and Mouse

“Or in mathematics. 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, Cat and Mouse

“Eles não podem agir de outra maneira, os senhores da criação. O privilégio da criação lhes é irrenunciável. Nós, mulheres, temos que ser criaturas, sim, e criaturas perfeitas. Sejamos agradecidas aos cavaleiros suecos, principalmente ao fatídico Axel, por terem desequilibrado tão artisticamente as faculdades da menina Agnes. As mulheres levemente desequilibradas se qualificam como musas excelentes.”
― Günter Grass, The Flounder