Quote

...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

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
Remain
Knot
Hand
Undo
Left
Fist
Hands
Dissatisfied
Right
Knots
Fists
Restless
Creates
Shatters

More quotes by Gunter Grass

Image
Art is hard for a puritan to understand.
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
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
Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd.
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.
Gunter Grass
Image
Students who don't want to get anywhere are sure to get somewhere.
Gunter Grass
Image
One of the mistakes the Germans made ... was that they were not brave enough to be afraid.
Gunter Grass
Image
Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.
Gunter Grass
Image
What can you say about a guy who lets himself be saddled with a baby when he's thirty-five and losing his hair? Love? Forget about that till you're past seventy, and by then the parts will have stopped working anyway.
Gunter Grass
Image
An empty bus hurtles through the starry night Perhaps the driver is singing and happy because he sings.
Gunter Grass
Image
Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
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
Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.
Gunter Grass
Image
There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we'd all been weaned too soon.
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
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.
Gunter Grass
Image
I have often supported Israel, I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its neighbours.
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
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.
Gunter Grass