Gunter Grass Quotes

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

The truth is, I've never fooled anyone. I've let men sometimes fool themselves.

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

When human beings distance themselves from their own inner truth and the truth around them, we can't see ourselves in our true light and that is to our detriment.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

Your inability to see yourself clearly is what's keeping you alive.

One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be.

What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying “I am nothing” I mean in effect “I wish I were not what I am.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

My personality doesn't interest me.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.

Begin within. If it shows up in your life, it's coming to tell you something about you that you're acting like you don't know. Something about yourself, or your relationship with God.

You can run, run, run away from a lot of things in life, but you can't run away from yourself. And the key to happiness is to understand and accept who you are.

I have to live in the truth that this is who I am. That's what I need to focus on.

I could do nice, but it's just not as much fun. Being nice isn't my biggest goal in life. I'm trying to be honest about who I am, and that's not always nice. I'm not always the world's cheerleader.

We love in others what we lack in ourselves, and would be everything, but what we are.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

I have not had time to reflect on my own truths in many years.

This book is pointing the way into it for people that see it as daunting or a mystery. Some people just do it, but others need help with the mindset, permission almost to listen to themselves. Understanding how things work is the key.

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

I try to find my deepest, often hidden feelings about what's working and what's not. This is difficult because I do lie to myself without being aware that that's what I'm doing.