German - Writer | May 18, 1944 - December 14, 2001
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
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England is not very easy to get in and out of.
EasyOutGetEnglandVery
A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
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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.
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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.
EyesTimePeopleBetterKnowForget
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.
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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.
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Places seem to me to have some kind of memory, in that they activate memory in those who look at them.
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I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business.
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Unlike Conrad or Nabokov, I didn't have circumstances which would have coerced me out of my native tongue altogether.
MeTongueCircumstancesOutWould
It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer - all that preoccupation and brooding.
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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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