W.G. Sebald

Time would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and relations of classes had to change, before I discovered that it is not quality of goods and utility that matter, but movement: not where you are or what you have, but where you come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there.

I realized that I had been searching for that detached gaze which is the sign of the sovereign consciousness, and I knew that I would never find it, for it was an inner faculty and no lens could give it.

The image of the world around me changes, and with it so does the world itself.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

It was not until we returned to the flat and I began to sort through everything that I realized how little we had left behind when we moved out.

The silence of the Sibyl is not easy to understand. The sound of her voice must have been quite different from human speech, perhaps it was only music. And she herself – why did she grow old in the cave? Perhaps she was forced to deny the God whose instrument she was.

The thought of history is a river swelling, and the thought of the world is a mine collapsing.

The more I read, the more I felt the weight of the centuries bear down upon me. But it was because it was so vast and so distant that it seemed to have no connection with the world around me.

The knowledge I had gained of the lives of other people was a knowledge of failure, and it did not help me to live.

Everything which had ever happened was a mere prelude, leading up to this moment, and this moment was the great climax of the history of the world.

I was surprised by how much I had written, and I felt a sense of having been unfaithful to the life I had led so far.

I had been to the ends of the earth and come back with nothing but memories of having been there.