Gunter Grass Quotes

The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.

The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.

It's odd, because I used to see pictures, on telly or wherever, of what I now know to be Shaftesbury Avenue and I used to wonder what that amazing street with all the lights was. Well, now I know. I think when you get a wee taste of something, it maybe isn't what you thought it was.

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I don't think you should meet the people you most admire. I don't want reality to interfere with my image.

Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.

I had a lot of romanticised ideas of what Detroit was like, but I didn't get there until I was 30, and it was very different than I had imagined it.

Losing a fantasy is much harder than losing a reality.

Nothing is worse than having your dreams come true.

Every morning, I have high expectations, and then I confront the reality of what happens at 4 o'clock.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.

It makes sense to work towards a better world, but it doesn't make any sense to have illusions about what the real world is.

One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature.

Your dreams should never be better than your real life

I've not won different awards - many, many times - so luckily I've practiced that whenever you are nominated for anything, you enter into this marvelous, fantabulous bubble called the bubble of nomination. The minute the envelope is opened and your name isn't called out, the bubble bursts. And no one calls you up the next day to say, 'So sorry you didn't win,' or 'You looked gorgeous - nothing. If you win, you get about another 24 hours in that lovely bubble and then - pop - you are slightly wet all over from the bubble and realize that you have to get on with real life.

Susannah." My dance partner's breath was soft against my cheek. "Susannah...." Yeah. In my dreams. In real life, the voice calling my name wasn't a bit masculine. That's because it belonged to a twelve-year-old boy.

I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.

You see, Dash -- I was never the girl in your head. And you were never the boy in my head. I think we both knew that. It's only when we try to make the girl or boy in our head real that the true trouble comes. I did that with Carlos, and it was a bad failure. Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.

The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion.

You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue - to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud - a missile that should never have reached you - and down you drop to the ground.

I was genuinely starstruck when I met Kermit the Frog. Like many stars here tonight, he's a lot shorter in real life.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.