Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.
In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.
Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.
My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grimm’s fairy tales. I even saw a theater production of ‘Tom Thumb’ during Advent at the State Theater in Danzig, which my mother took me to see.
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.
Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that.
It’s dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.
Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age.
When 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.
An empty bus hurtles through the starry night Perhaps the driver is singing and happy because he sings.
On sorrow floats laughter.
I don’t believe in writing at night because it comes too easily. When I read it in the morning it’s not good. I need daylight to begin. Between nine and ten o’clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music.
I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense.
I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray – and allowed itself to be led astray.
I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit.
They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.
Grownups have it in them to be creative, and sometimes, with the help of ambition, hard work, and a bit of luck they actually are, but being grownups, they have no sooner created some epoch-making invention than they become a slave to it.
Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists.
Alle donne non si devono mai regalare fotografie, ne fanno sempre cattivo uso.
And once they’ve dragged and driven one another far enough into the land of Onceuponatime, the landless peasants and prisoners, along with the soldiers guarding them, start hoping that they will finally find land, get better pay, and be free from chains. So full of promise is the past.