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 GrassWhen the young woman leans over the sky, about to water the flowers as well as the weeds, her white front splits open until her milk runs.
Gunter GrassOne of the mistakes the Germans made ... was that they were not brave enough to be afraid.
Gunter GrassI wept when the muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded by tears I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Sapse Cemetery.
Gunter GrassWhenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.
Gunter Grass