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" A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern. "
W. G. Sebald
Concern
Seems
Book
Related Quotes:
" I don't think one can write from a compromised moral position. "
W. G. Sebald
Position
Moral
Think
" The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. "
W. G. Sebald
Memory
Chance
Lead
" Unlike Conrad or Nabokov, I didn't have circumstances which would have coerced me out of my native tongue altogether. "
W. G. Sebald
Me
Out
Circumstances
" The writing I do makes great demands on translators. "
W. G. Sebald
Demands
Writing
Makes
" To my mind, it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. But it is something you cannot possibly escape: your psychological make-up is such that you are inclined to look back over your shoulder. "
W. G. Sebald
Look
Chance
Memory
" 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
Experience
Loss
Time
" I am what I am. "
W. G. Sebald
I Am
I Am What I Am
Am
" 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
Know
Better
Eyes
" Places seem to me to have some kind of memory, in that they activate memory in those who look at them. "
W. G. Sebald
Kind
Seem
Places
" I've always felt that the traditional novel doesn't give you enough information about the narrator, and I think it's important to know the point of view from which these tales are told: the moral makeup of the teller. "
W. G. Sebald
View
Think
Makeup
" In the history of postwar German writing, for the first 15 or 20 years, people avoided mentioning political persecution - the incarceration and systematic extermination of whole peoples and groups in society. Then, from 1965, this became a preoccupation of writers - not always in an acceptable form. "
W. G. Sebald
Years
History
People
" Up until the 17th century, Germany was far more advanced, but then everything devastated by the 30 Years War began to fall apart... The culture is not innocent. "
W. G. Sebald
Culture
War
Innocent
" I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit. "
W. G. Sebald
Anonymity
Write
Will
" 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
Village
You
Thought
" It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer - all that preoccupation and brooding. "
W. G. Sebald
Live
Writer
Uncomfortable
" Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German. "
W. G. Sebald
Odd
Piece
Small
" My texts are written like palimpsests. They are written over and over again, until I feel that a kind of metaphysical meaning can be read through the writing. "
W. G. Sebald
Like
Meaning
Over
" I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business. "
W. G. Sebald
Way
Business
Through
" 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
Opening
Film
" 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
Father
Small Town
" My father was not really a presence for me. He was away; he was in the German army. "
W. G. Sebald
Me
Army
Away
" 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
Trials
You
Talk
" I've always been interested in photographs, collecting them not systematically but randomly. They get lost, then turn up again. "
W. G. Sebald
Up
Been
Always
" When I was a boy, I'd hide under the kitchen table and wind string around the chairs. I have a sense now that I am pulling on those threads. The more I pull, the more it comes unraveled. "
W. G. Sebald
Boy
Wind
Now
" 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
People
Years
Small
" Comparing oneself with one's fellow writers is a bad idea. I would not review a fellow writer unless I had something terribly positive to say. "
W. G. Sebald
Idea
Bad
Writer
" The longer I carry on, the more difficult writing seems to get. "
W. G. Sebald
More
Carry
Seems
" England is not very easy to get in and out of. "
W. G. Sebald
Easy
England
Get
" 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
Events
Book
" 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
Language
Yourself
Trust