German - Author | October 16, 1927 - April 13, 2015
Memory likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needlessly. Memory contradicts itself; pedant that it is, it will have its way.
Gunter Grass
DressMemoryPlayWillWayUp
I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense.
WordsCreateNonsenseFoundPathos
I can only write a book like 'The Tin Drum' or 'From the Diary of a Snail' at a special period of my life. The books came about because of how I felt and thought at the time.
LifeTimeBookThoughtMy LifeDrum
With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing.
I AmWritingDrawingYouCreating
Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.
GratefulI AmLessonEarlyI Can
Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.
LifeMindPrivilegeClassBecome
Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises.
LifeArtFullUncompromising
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.
WorkAgeConflictBusyDawnWill
Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.
WorldInformationNothingTakeSheer
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
JobMouthCitizenOpenKeepHis
Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
BadSacredBooksEvenTherefore
What I do is sometimes - at least in Germany - met with wounding campaigns. I always face the question: should I grow myself a thick skin and ignore it, or should I let myself be wounded? I've decided to be wounded, since, if I grew a thick skin, there are other things I wouldn't feel any more.
MyselfFaceGrowFeelIgnoreSkin
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