I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next... of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.
Gunter GrassI belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray.
Gunter GrassOne of the mistakes the Germans made ... was that they were not brave enough to be afraid.
Gunter GrassGranted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.
Gunter Grass