Gunter Grass

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

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

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

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?

I was brought up Catholic and know the stench of the Catholic Church. I moved away from religion early, but the impression remains.

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.

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.

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.