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" 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
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" 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. "
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" I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business. "
W. G. Sebald
Way
Business
Through
" My father was not really a presence for me. He was away; he was in the German army. "
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Me
Army
Away
" 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 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
" 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. "
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I Can
Find
Born
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" England is not very easy to get in and out of. "
W. G. Sebald
Easy
England
Get
" Although I hold a German passport, I feel very much alienated when I'm there. "
W. G. Sebald
Hold
I Feel
Feel
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit. "
W. G. Sebald
Anonymity
Write
Will
" 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
" 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
" The writing I do makes great demands on translators. "
W. G. Sebald
Demands
Writing
Makes
" 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
" 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
" I am what I am. "
W. G. Sebald
I Am
I Am What I Am
Am
" 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
" 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
" It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer - all that preoccupation and brooding. "
W. G. Sebald
Live
Writer
Uncomfortable
" 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