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Book: The Tin Drum
Quotes of Book: The Tin Drum

Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
When Jan was called up to service a fourth time...my mother waited outside...the two of them were convinced that this time Jan would have to go, that they would surely send him off to cure his ailing chest in the air of France, famed for its iron and lead content.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
Three times Jan had been called to the colours {the army}, but each time had been deferred because of his deplorable physical condition..when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change in posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
Gregor was a real drinker..he didn't drink because he was sad..{or} cheerful. He drank because he was a thorough man, who like to get to the bottom of things, of bottles as well as everything else.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
my incessantly syllable-excreting mind
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
A fifteen-year-old dropped her cone, bent to retrieve it, then hesitated, abandoned the melting delicacy to the pavement and the soles of future passers-by; soon she would be one of the grown-ups and no longer lick ice cream in the street.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
Si alguna vez vamos a parar al infierno, uno de los tormentos más refinados consistirá en encerrar en una habitación al ser humano desnudo con las fotos enmarcadas de su tiempo... tal vez ese infierno no resulte incluso soportable, porque las peores fotos sólo se sueñan, no se hacen y, si se hacen, no se revelan.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
there is no Paul, the man's name was Saul and a Saul he was, and it was Saul who told the people of Corinth something about some priceless sausages that he called faith, hope, and love, which he advertised as easily digestible and which to this very day, still Saul though forever changing in form, he palms off on mankind.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
And Oskar was kneeling at the left side-altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the rascal wouldn't drum, offered no miracle. Oskar had sworn back then and swore again outside the locked church door: I'll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
I search on my drum for the land of the Poles and drum: lost, not yet lost, lost once more, lost to whom, lost too soon, lost by now, Poland's lost, all is lost, Poland is not yet lost.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
An entire gullible nation believed faithfully in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the Gasman.
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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Günter Grass _ The Tin Drum
When today Oskar, lying or sitting in his hospital bed but in either case drumming, revisits Arsenal Passage and the Stockturm with the scribbles on its dungeon walls and its well-oiled instruments of torture, when once again he looks down on those three windows outside the lobby of the Stadt-Theater and thereafter returns to Arsenal Passage and Sigismund Markus' store, searching for the particulars of a day in September, he cannot help looking for Poland at the same time. How does he look for it? With his drumsticks. Does he also look for Poland with his soul? He looks for it with every organ of his being, but the soul is not an organ.I look for the land of the Poles that is lost to the Germans, for the moment at least. Nowadays the Germans have started searching for Poland with credits, Leicas, and compasses, with radar, divining rods, delegations, and moth-eaten provincial students' associations in costume. Some carry Chopin in their hearts, others thoughts of revenge. Condemning the first four partitions of Poland, they are busily planning a fifth; in the meantime flying to Warsaw via Air France in order to deposit, with appropriate remorse, a wreath on the spot that was once the ghetto. One of these days they will go searching for Poland with rockets. I, meanwhile, conjure up Poland on my drum. And this is what I drum: Poland's lost, but not forever, all's lost, but not forever, Poland's not lost forever.
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