W. G. Sebald Quotes

I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II.

I grew up loving history.

I was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1943.

My generation had the best years. We missed the Second World War and caught the outburst of rock 'n' roll.

I think one's history and past is important at a certain time in your life, especially as an artist, just to try to hone in on that.

I know that 20 years from now if anyone asks me one question, it will be, 'What was it like to be in Saving Private Ryan?

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

Each generation of adolescents has at least two historical events that color its responses to whatever happens next.

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

People say, 'Don't live in the past.' But I guess it depends on how interesting your past is.

My past is very interesting, and I treasure it, but to write about it, it's just not on my radar.

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s.

I met Hilary Vaughan at a Student Ball in 1944 and we married in the summer of 1946, as soon as I graduated.

I'd experienced the '40s and '50s by looking at my grandparents' old clothes, books, and magazines.

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.

It's funny: I don't feel like I have any particular privileged feeling for the Fifties.

Whatever has happened in your past, it's - you can never deny it. I mean, you can never wash what's happened before in your life out of you.

When I look back to my childhood, many concrete scenes come to my mind, good ones and bad ones.

I've always been fascinated by history.

I keep a diary when I have time to. I always know that I'm either having a great time or I'm very busy when there are three weeks of nothing in my diary. But I like to look back because in ten years to the day I can know where I was and what I was doing, and that's a nice feeling.

We all have those dreams of going back in time and seeing what it was like when our parents were younger. Maybe we don't all have that dream. I don't know. Getting to role play or step back to a different moment in time and see things through a different lens is something that resonated with me, for sure. We don't get to do that, generally, but when the right neurological disorder lines up with the right unstable woman, that moment presents itself. Getting to know where we come from is a really profound way of getting to look at who we are.

It is hard to look back and talk about a set of disjointed experiences as though they were part of one smooth progression.

How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?

The past is never where you think you left it.

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.