W. G. Sebald Quotes

I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.

Don't believe me, don't believe yourself, and don't believe anyone else.

I am sure of very little, and I shouldn't be surprised if those things were wrong.

This can't be true but I remember it.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

Flee and your bad behavior will be fixed in people's minds. Return, seem in goo spirits, and everyone will doubt their own memory of events.

It would make life much easier if I could have total faith and not question everything all the time, but I can't do it and I won't do it.

Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.

...our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

One of my bywords is that nobody knows anything, including me.

When you don't trust people all of the sudden you stop trusting anything.

What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.

Not seeing is half-believing.

I was starting to think I was making up memories, just to have answers. Our brain does that sometimes. Or at least mine does.

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.

When you don't believe something, you can't make yourself believe it. There's nothing you can do to believe it again. You either believe it or you don't.

Doubt is merely a thought. When experience proves it wrong, it will quickly go away.

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong.

The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

If you haven't doubted, you probably haven't thought very hard about what you believe.

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.