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Authors:

W. G. Sebald quotes

Deutsch Writer May 18, 1944 – December 14, 2001

Cite this Page: Citation

Quotes

I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind... W. G. Sebald
This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was. W. G. Sebald
Like a tightrope walker who has forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other, all I felt was the swaying of the precarious structure on which I stood, stricken with Terror at the realization that the ends of the balancing pole gleaming far out on the edges of my field of vision were no longer my guiding lights, as before, but malignant enticements to me to cast myself into the depths. W. G. Sebald
They were all as timeless as that moment of rescue, perpetuated but forever just occurring, these ornaments, utensils, and mementos stranded in the Terazn bazaar, objects that for reasons one could never know had outlived their former owners and survived the process of destruction, so that I could now see my own faint shadow image barely perceptible among them. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald quote: "A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the..."
A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern. W. G. Sebald
The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald quote: "No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the..."
No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open. W. G. Sebald
The seasons and the years came and went...and always...one was, as the crow flies, about 2,000 km away - but from where? - and day by day hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract. W. G. Sebald
...and I came to the conclusion that in any project we design and develop, the size and degree of complexity of the information and control systems inscribed in it are the crucial factors, so that the all-embracing and absolute perfection of the concept can in practice coincide, indeed ultimately must coincide, with its chronic dysfunction and constitutional instability. W. G. Sebald
It is hard, said Mme Landau, when I told her about those railway lessons, in the end it is hard to know what it is that someone dies of. Yes, it is very hard, said Mme Landau, one really doesn't know. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald quote: "How I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a..."
How I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a different nation, or better still, to none at all. W. G. Sebald
Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. W. G. Sebald
There is something peculiarly dispriting about the emptiness that wells up when, in a strange city, one dials the same telephone numbers in vain. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald quote: "We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result..."
We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald quote: "Dr K. relishes the pleasures (but only, as he notes himself,..."
Dr K. relishes the pleasures (but only, as he notes himself, the pleasures) of being declassed. W. G. Sebald

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