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Quote by W. G. Sebald

“We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.”

Quote by W. G. Sebald

Author

W. G. Sebald (May 18, 1944 – December 14, 2001) was a German writer whose distinctive style combined elements of fiction, memoir, and travel writing. His works frequently explore themes of history, memory, and the impact of the past on the present. Sebald's writing is characterized by its introspective tone, richly detailed descriptions, and a sense of melancholy. more

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“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.”

Years Lost Hours Quality Beats Seasons Oneself Abstract Pulse Crow

Author:W. G. Sebald

“To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.”

Knows Men Giving Fall Names Wish Know How Gone Summer Forgotten Snow Titles Remembered Oblivion Iniquity Wretchedness Best Of Me Without A Trace

Book:The Rings of Saturn

Source: The Rings of Saturn

“Otherwise, all I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking.”

Thinking Mean Eye Remember Certain Found Darkness Philosopher Painter Fixed Surround Penetrate Inquiring

Author: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.”

Ifs Way Said Past Happened Normal Absurd Unlikely

Book:Vertigo

Source: Vertigo

“Physicists now say there is no such thing as time: everything co-exists. Chronology is entirely artificial and essentially determined by emotion. Contiguity suggests layers of things, the past and present somehow coalescing or co-existing.”

Past Emotion Determined Artificial Layers Physicist Past And Present Chronology

Author:W. G. Sebald

“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.”

Found Seven Edges Bones Decades Ice Pairs Boots Polished

Book:The Emigrants

Source: The Emigrants

“And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.”

Book:The Emigrants

Source: The Emigrants

“Human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away.”

Humans Has Beens Hours Growing Strange Civilization Intense Fades Fade Away Human Civilization

Book:The Rings of Saturn

Source: The Rings of Saturn

“I have always kept ducks, even as a child, and the colours of their plumage, in particular the dark green and snow white, seemed to me the only possible answer to the questions that are on my mind.”

Mind Children Dark White Answers Particular Green Snow Colour Ducks Snow White

Book:The Rings of Saturn

Source: The Rings of Saturn

“Everything our civilization has produced is entombed.”

Author:W. G. Sebald