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" My father was not really a presence for me. He was away; he was in the German army. "
W. G. Sebald
Me
Army
Away
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" 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
" If you're based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages everywhere. On a bad day, returning to Germany brings back all kinds of spectres from the past. "
W. G. Sebald
Bad Day
Past
You
" There is a beauty in nature and culture that we no longer have access to. Those things you can't forget, you embroider... The further you tell, the further you travel from truth, which means, of course, that literature is a lie. "
W. G. Sebald
Culture
Beauty
Truth
" 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
" 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
" In school I was in the dark room all the time, and I've always collected stray photographs; there's a great deal of memory in them. "
W. G. Sebald
Dark
Time
School
" 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
" 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
" Mine is a European imagination, shaped largely by my very promiscuous reading in German, French, English and, with greater difficulty, Italian. "
W. G. Sebald
Reading
Mine
Imagination
" I cannot get over the fact that I was born in 1944. I want to find out as much as I can about that year. "
W. G. Sebald
I Can
Find
Born
" I don't think one can write from a compromised moral position. "
W. G. Sebald
Position
Moral
Think
" I am what I am. "
W. G. Sebald
I Am
I Am What I Am
Am
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer - all that preoccupation and brooding. "
W. G. Sebald
Live
Writer
Uncomfortable
" Although I hold a German passport, I feel very much alienated when I'm there. "
W. G. Sebald
Hold
I Feel
Feel
" 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
" My parents came from working-class, small-peasant, farm-labourer backgrounds and had made the grade during the fascist years; my father came out of the army as a captain. "
W. G. Sebald
Parents
Captain
Army
" 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
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit. "
W. G. Sebald
Anonymity
Write
Will