W. G. Sebald Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.
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There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.
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The only way to do is just to go for it, otherwise it ends up looking phoney.
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I think fashion is actually very good training for being in the tech world, because it's all about moving on to the next thing, looking for the next thing, not getting stuck in the past.
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My works are an imitation of my own past and present.
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Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it.
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I wear my Viking helmet because the horns define how sharp my brains are. If you try to rub me the wrong way, I will stick you with both of my horns.
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In a world that's smarter than it used to be and, in some ways, smarter than it ought to be, stupidity has a way of making us seem all the more human.
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In general, all cancers have been traditionally characterized by the way they appear under the microscope and the organs in which they arise.
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I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.
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Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family.
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I am not ashamed of anything - not my past, not my affairs, not my body, and most definitely not my desire.
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The sense of one's past is so strong and forms our sense of self so strongly, it will always fascinate, elude and confuse me.
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Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.
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Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.
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The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price.
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People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor.
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I have to earn re-election. That's the way I see it.
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All labels are offensive in some way.
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Entertainment has this way of resetting itself.
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We will see a breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle with all the benefits that go with equating it with the heterosexual lifestyle.
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No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
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The rice bowl is to me the most valid reason in the world for doing anything. A piece of one's soul to the multitudes in return for rice and wine does not seem to me a sacrilege.
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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.
