Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss. Gunter Grass More Quotes by Gunter Grass More Quotes From Gunter Grass 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. Gunter Grass germanycampaignsskins 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 mindwritingthinking 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. Gunter Grass principlesdawnage As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things. Gunter Grass motherliarschildren You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be. Gunter Grass wickedvaingenius Art is hard for a puritan to understand. Gunter Grass puritanart-isart Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin. Gunter Grass melancholycoinstails Everything bigger than life attracts a crowd. Gunter Grass bigger-than-lifecrowdsbigger 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 differenthurtlying Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises. Gunter Grass compromiselife-isart [To be an artist,] this desire to conquer all with images. Gunter Grass conquerartistdesire 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 puritanirrationalart Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. Gunter Grass unseentodaymemories People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later they seem to him alien and strange. I am trying to decipher that child. Sometimes he is a stranger to me. When you think about when you were 14, don't you feel a certain alienation? Gunter Grass childrenyearsthinking 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 readingmorningbelieve [America is] the land where people find whatever they have lost. Gunter Grass landamericapeople The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists. Gunter Grass oxenforevermen I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray. Gunter Grass socialismgenerationsgrew-up I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense. Gunter Grass nonsenseseductivefound Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your man of action and bashes in the hothouse windows. Gunter Grass tryingmenmoving
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