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bc191d1
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Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
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literature
sacredness
quality
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Günter Grass |
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2de5e19
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Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.
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Günter Grass |
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3818f96
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I remain restless and dissatisfied; what I knot with my right hand, I undo with my left, what my left hand creates, my right fist shatters
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Günter Grass |
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d9e216a
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You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.
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vanity
wickedness
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Günter Grass |
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e3bd30d
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If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.
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Günter Grass |
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c8e84e9
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When Satan's not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn't even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?
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Günter Grass |
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4b217ac
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And when the sun goes down and the mood comes upon me, I'll watch the play of the colors on the water, yield to the fleetly dissolving images, and turn into pure feeling, all soft and nice....
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Günter Grass |
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dbfb531
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if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us...
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Günter Grass |
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3d6eb3b
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there is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perhaps all happiness is an ersatz for happiness.
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Günter Grass |
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fff05c4
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Love That's it: The cashless commerce. The blanket always too short. The loose connexion. To search behind the horizon. To brush fallen leaves with four shoes and in one's mind to rub bare feet. To let and rent hearts; or in a room with shower and mirror, in a hired car, bonnet facing the moon, wherever innocence stops and burns its programme, the word in falsetto sounds different and new each time. Today, in front of a box office not yet o..
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Günter Grass |
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7148817
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What did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they could cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away. The rain came. The dew. Oskar has a vision of floodgates opening. Of dams bursting in the spring floods. What is the name of that river that overflows every spring an..
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Günter Grass |
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a8d8690
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Mama sabia ser alegre. Mama sabia ser temerosa. Mama sabia olvidar facilmente. Y, sin embargo tenia buena memoria. Mama me daba con la puerta en la narices, y sin embargo, me admitia en su bano. A veces mama se me perdia, pero su instinto me encontraba. Cuando yo rompia vidrios, mama ponia la masilla. A veces se instalaba en el error, aunque a su alrededor hubiera sillas suficientes. Aun cuando se encerraba en si misma, para mi siempre esta..
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mama
recuerdo
muerte
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Günter Grass |
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a5d3432
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Thus my task was destruction.
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Günter Grass |
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2de2001
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We were convinced that she looked on with indifference if she noticed us at all. Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn't God in His heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coathanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts.
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Günter Grass |
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b8c5b9f
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Once upon a time there was a musician who slew his four cats, stuffed them in a garbage can, left the building, and went to visit friends.
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Günter Grass |
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a1855bf
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Einerseits geben Worter Sinn, andererseits sind sie tauglich, Unsinn zu stiften. Worter konnen heilsam oder verletzend sein. Das Wort als Waffe. Sich spreizende, auftrumpfende, mit Bedeutung gemastete Worter. Manche sind Zungenbrecher, andere lassen erkennen, verschleiern, leugnen ab, decken zu oder auf. Oft liegen winzige Wahrheiten unter Wortlawinen begraben. Aus Wortstreit entspringen Schimpfworter. Fluche, Beschworungen, Zauberspruche b..
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wörter
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Günter Grass |
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7dcd105
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We struck up a conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow and sticking to the most frivolous topics. Did he, I asked, believe in predestination? He did. Did he believe that all men were doomed to die? Yes, he felt certain that all men would absolutely have to die, but he was less sure that all men had to be born...
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Günter Grass |
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92cabdc
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Behind all sorrows in the world Klepp saw a ravenous hunger; all human suffering, he believed, could be cured with a portion of blood sausage. What quantities of fresh blood sausage with rings of onion, washed down with beer, Oskar consumed in order to make his friend think his sorrow's name was hunger and not Sister Dorothy.
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Günter Grass |
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0980c04
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I've also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes.
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Günter Grass |
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d22d947
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They had tried doing it by themselves in her room with a cheap onion, but it wasn't the same. You needed an audience. It was so much easier to cry in company. It gave you a real sense of brotherhood in sorrow when to the right and left of you and in the gallery overhead your fellow students were all crying their hearts out.
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Günter Grass |
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ecd4c88
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At the beginning of the semester, Ulla wanted to pose only for the 'new trends' - a flea that Meiter, her Easter egg painter had put in her ear; his engagement present to her had been a vocabulary which she tried out in conversations with me. She spoke of relationships, constellations, actions, perspectives, granular structures, processes of fusion, phenomena of erosion. She, whose daily fare consisted exclusively of bananas and tomato juic..
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Günter Grass |
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bf4f4c0
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And so Yorick did not become a good citizen, but a Hamlet, a fool.
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Günter Grass |
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f83fbf5
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solo los autenticos perezosos son capaces de hacer inventos para ahorrar trabajo.
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inventos
perezosos
trabajo
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Günter Grass |
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8bcf47c
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Suppose you're teaching math. You assume that parallel lines meet at infinity. You'll admit that adds up to something like transcendence.
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Günter Grass |
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ca2629f
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there is no such thing as a parttime partisan. Real partisans are partisans always and as long as they live. They put fallen governments back in power and overthrow governments that have just been put in power with the help of partisans. Mr Matzerath contended - and his thesis struck me as perfectly plausible - that among all those who go in for politics your incorrigible partisan, who undermines what he has just set up, is closest to the a..
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Günter Grass |
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ed4a391
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I wept when the muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded by tears I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Sapse Cemetery.
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Günter Grass |
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778a715
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I am not trying to say that a passport photo of himself can cure a gloomy man of a gloom for which there is no ground; for true gloom is by nature groundless; such gloom, ours at least, can be traced to no identifiable cause, and with its almost riotous gratuitousness this gloom of ours attained a pitch of intensity that would yield to nothing. If there was any way of making friends with our gloom, it was through the photos, because in thes..
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Günter Grass |
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89a08db
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Memory likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needlessly. Memory contradicts itself; pedant that it is, it will have its way.
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memory-loss
memory
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Günter Grass |
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6ad6ad0
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The god of unreflecting drunkenness advised me to take no reading matter at all, or if I absolutely insisted on reading matter, then a little stack of Rasputin would do; Apollo, on the other hand, in his shrewd, sensible way, tried to talk me out of this trip to France altogether, but when he saw that Oskar's mind was made up, insisted on proper baggage; very well, I would have to take the highly respectable yawn that Goethe had yawned so l..
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Günter Grass |
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1ac59e0
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So rode the squadrons out against the grey steel foe, adding another dash of red to the sunset glow.
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Günter Grass |
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0f9ad03
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Man mag noch so viel uber die beliebte Dreiecksthematik des Theaters schimpfen; zwei Personen alleine auf der Buhne, was sollen sie tun, als sich totdiskutieren oder insgeheim nach dem Dritten sehnen.
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romance
german
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Günter Grass |
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4acd4be
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Mahlke couldn't joke. He sometimes tried. But everything he did, touched or said, became solemn, significant, monumental;
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joking
seriousness
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Günter Grass |
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2bad15e
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my pride in Joachim Mahlke was as sweet as chocolate creams.
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pride
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Günter Grass |
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7cddd09
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If hell's in store for us someday, one of its most refined forms of torture will be to lock a person naked in a room filled with framed photos of his era.
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Günter Grass |
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1a24bac
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What more can I say: born beneath light bulbs, interrupted my growth at the age of three, was given a drum, sangshattered glass, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, stuffed Luzie with food, watched ants as they crawled, decided to grow, buried the drum, moved to the West, lost what was East, learned to carve stone and posed as a model, went back to my drum and inspected concrete, made money and cared for the finger, gave the finger away a..
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Günter Grass |
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4853a84
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When pestered with questions, memory is like an onion that wishes to be peeled so we can read what is laid bare letter by letter.
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onions
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Günter Grass |
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3fa9011
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Aber wie es nun einmal ist: Im selben Mass, wie die Erwachsenen Schopfer sein konnen und bei Fleiss, Ehrgeiz und einigem Gluck auch sind, werden sie gleich nach der Schopfung Geschopfe ihrer eigenen epochemachenden Erfindungen.
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Günter Grass |
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4cfd28f
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The grim portrait of Beethoven hanging over the piano . . . was removed from its nail, and an equally grim portrait of Hitler was hung on the same nail. . . . Mama . . . insisted that Beethoven be placed, if not over the sofa, at least over the sideboard. This resulted in the grimmest of confrontations: Hitler and the genius hung opposite each other, stared at each other, saw through each other, yet found no joy in what they saw.
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Günter Grass |
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f192d92
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Doch das sei abermals betont: angestossen, politisch zu werden, hat mich nicht Willy Brandt, sondern der allerchristlichste Kanzler. Er, der sich aus Nachstenliebe den Kommentator der Rassengesetze, Hans Globke, als Staatssekretar hielt, er, dem das christliche Abendland nur bis zur Elbe reichte, er verdachtigte den Emigranten Brandt ,,alias Frahm" unterschwellig des Landesverrats. Sein Christentum katholischer Machart gab ihm ein, unehelic..
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Günter Grass |
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53ebdb7
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Hoy ya se que todo nos espia, que nada pasa inadvertido y que aun el papal pintado de las paredes tiene mejor memoria que los hombres. Y no es el buen Dios el que lo ve todo. No, una silla de cocina, una percha, ceniceros a medio llenar o la imagen de una mujer llamada Niobe bastan para proporcionar de todo acto un testimonio imperecedero.
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espía
imperecedero
testimonio
dios
memoria
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Günter Grass |
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b76510d
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For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourth persons, as to take up three or four exciting acts in a play.
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marriage
life
love
nobel-prize
quotes
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Günter Grass |
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0d3c641
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Hundert teppichklopfende Weiber konnen einen Himmel ersturmen, konnen jungen Schwalben die Flugelspitzen stumpf machen und brachten Oskars in die Aprilluft getrommeltes Tempelchen mit weningen Schlagen zum Einsturz.
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Günter Grass |
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cc81bf9
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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 loo..
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Günter Grass |
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2c04a10
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Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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Günter Grass |