153 Quotes by Gunter Grass

An empty bus hurtles through the starry nightPerhaps the driver is singingand happy because he sings.

But because so many kept silent, the temptation is great to discount one's own silence, or to compensate for it by invoking the general guilt, or to speak about oneself all but abstractly, in the third person: he was, saw, had, said, he kept silent...

We seemed to have arrived at a reality only to abandon it or exchange it for something that claimed to be another reality.

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.

Alle donne non si devono mai regalare fotografie, ne fanno sempre cattivo uso.

Though I knew that this tangle consisting by turns of Mama and Jan or Matzerath and Mama – sighing, straining, then moaning in exhaustion, falling apart, trailing sticky threads – meant love, Oskar still couldn't believe that love was love, and moved by love sought other loves, yet always returned to that same tangle-love, hated that love till he'd practised that love himself and was forced to defend it in his own eyes as the only true and possible love.

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.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

Mahlke couldn't joke. He sometimes tried. But everything he did, touched or said, became solemn, significant, monumental;