How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no … - W. G. Sebald

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

Fundamentalism is rigorously and systematically used to indoctrinate and subjugate young minds. It is a contraceptive designed to prevent intellectual fertilization.

W. G. Sebald

How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper.

Book, Dark, Lamplight, Sat, Tip, Twilight

Same Author Quotes

It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

Evening, Reading, Sane, Thanks

We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.

Conscious, Lives, Results, Steps

I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

Air, Audience, Dream, Lakes, Realities, Reality

No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding.

Boston, City, Light, Mother, Philadelphia, Ruhr

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.

Absurd, Appalling, Normal, Past, Way