Quote

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

Gunter Grass

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gunter Grass
Age: 87 †
Born: 1927
Born: October 16
Died: 2015
Died: April 13
Altar Server
Author
Autobiographer
Essayist
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Lyricist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Playwright
Poet
Printmaker
Danzig
Günter Wilhelm Grass
Günter Graß
Günter Wilhelm Graß
Books
Book
Even
Sacred
Therefore

More quotes by Gunter Grass

Image
Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. It's not God in his heaven who sees everything. A kitchen chair, a clothes hanger, a half-filled ashtray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can serve perfectly well as an unforgetting witness to our every deed.
Gunter Grass
Image
Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.
Gunter Grass
Image
If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.
Gunter Grass
Image
Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that.
Gunter Grass
Image
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.
Gunter Grass
Image
[America is] the land where people find whatever they have lost.
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.
Gunter Grass
Image
I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.
Gunter Grass
Image
Art is hard for a puritan to understand.
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.
Gunter Grass
Image
An empty bus hurtles through the starry night Perhaps the driver is singing and happy because he sings.
Gunter Grass
Image
I don't believe in writing at night because it comes too easily. When I read it in the morning it's not good. I need daylight to begin. Between nine and ten o'clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music.
Gunter Grass
Image
Who can deny that the environment has been destroyed?
Gunter Grass
Image
The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous.
Gunter Grass
Image
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?
Gunter Grass
Image
What makes books - and with them writers - so dangerous that church and state, politburos and the mass media feel the need to oppose them?
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
[To be an artist,] this desire to conquer all with images.
Gunter Grass