Where I grew up, in a remote village at the back of a valley, the old still thought the dead needed attending to - a notion so universal, it's enscribed in all religions. If you didn't, they might exact revenge upon the living. W. G. Sebald More Quotes by W. G. Sebald More Quotes From W. G. Sebald The capital amassed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through various forms of slave economy is still in circulation, said De Jong, still bearing interest, increasing many times over and continually burgeoning anew. W. G. Sebald slave economy century No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open. W. G. Sebald childhood terror doors A wonderful story collection set between one place and another and shaped by a fearless sense of comedy. W. G. Sebald fearless comedy stories It is a sore point, because you do have advantages if you have access to more than one language. You also have problems, because on bad days you don't trust yourself, either in your first or your second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit. W. G. Sebald bad-day trust firsts I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all... only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry[the geometric measurement of solid bodies], between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like, and the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead. W. G. Sebald eye moving thinking 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 crow quality years It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time. W. G. Sebald space waiting house And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots. W. G. Sebald pairs ice boots Going home is not necessarily a wonderful experience. It always comes with a sense of loss and makes you so conscious of the inexorable passage of time. W. G. Sebald you experience home time I've always been interested in photographs, collecting them not systematically but randomly. They get lost, then turn up again. W. G. Sebald turn get always lost I am what I am. W. G. Sebald am i-am i-am-what-i-am I don't want to talk about my trials and tribulations. Once you reveal even part of what your real problems might be in life, they come back in a deformed way. W. G. Sebald problems you life way It would be presumptuous to say writing a book would be a sufficient gesture, but if people were more preoccupied with the past, maybe the events that overwhelm us would be fewer. W. G. Sebald writing book people past Although I hold a German passport, I feel very much alienated when I'm there. W. G. Sebald passport hold i-feel feel I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit. W. G. Sebald continue write will anonymity A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern. W. G. Sebald quite first concern book People's ability to forget what they do not want to know, to overlook what is before their eyes, was seldom put to the test better than in Germany at that time. W. G. Sebald eyes better time people I was brought up largely by my grandfather because my father only returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1947 and worked in the nearest small town, so I hardly ever saw him. W. G. Sebald small small-town grandfather father Until I was 16 or 17, I had heard practically nothing about the history that preceded 1945. Only when we were 17 were we confronted with a documentary film of the opening of the Belsen camp. W. G. Sebald only nothing opening history You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist. W. G. Sebald meeting grow you people
