Gunter Grass

“When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I had an uncle who was a postal official at the Polish post office in Gdansk. He was one of the defenders of the Polish postal service and, after it capitulated, was shot by the Germans under the provisions of martial law. Suddenly he was no longer a member of the family, and we were no longer allowed to play with his children.”

“Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side by side in a very democratic way in my work.”

“The European Union arose on an economic foundation, and it turns out that even this is not a solid base. Cultural identity has been neglected.”

“Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper.”

“No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots.”

“Our minds aren't bound by a chronological corset. When thinking and dreaming, past, present and future are mixed up. That's also possible for a writer.”

“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.”

“My sister and I did not have our own rooms, or even a place to ourselves. In the living room, beyond the two windows, was a little corner where my books were kept, and other thing - my watercolors and so on. Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise.”

“Auschwitz speaks against even a right to self-determination that is enjoyed by all other peoples because one of the preconditions for the horror, besides other, older urges, was a strong and united Germany.”

“It is a wonderful thing in the process of writing when such paper characters are first sketched, and, when one is doing good work, from a certain point in time they come alive and start contradicting the author as well.”

“For me, writing, drawing, and political activism are three separate pursuits; each has its own intensity. I happen to be especially attuned to and engaged with the society in which I live. Both my writing and my drawing are invariably mixed up with politics, whether I want them to be or not.”

“As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.”

“I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.”

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.”

“I've always been surrounded by children - never bothered by their noise.”

“If we take into account the existence of our planet, we have to recognise that we are guests that spend a short and very determined period in this world, and all we leave behind is nuclear waste.”

“A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure.”