Gunter Grass

INTERVIEWER 
What is your daily schedule when you work? 

GRASS 

When I’m working on the first version, I write between five and seven pages a day. For the third version, three pages a day. It’s very slow. 

INTERVIEWER 

You do this in the morning or in the afternoon or at night? 

GRASS 

Never, never at night. 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. After breakfast I work, and then take a break for coffee in the afternoon. I start again and finish at seven o’clock in the evening.

The Paris Review, Summer 1991

(Thanks to Aseem Mahajan.)

Comments

[Claire]

Thanks, but I think this might be more accurate as:

I wake up.
I criticize Germans for their complicity in the war.
I ponder how to keep my own Waffen SS past hidden.
I lecture some more Germans about morality.
I think some more about covering up my participation in the Waffen SS.
I go to bed.