W. G. Sebald Quotes

I see the Past, Present & Future existing all at once Before me.

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe.

Our linear concept of time means nothing to nature.

I confess, I do not believe in time.

Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.

There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.

Time is not a linear flow, as we think it is, into past, present, and future. Time is an indivisible whole, a great pool in which all events are eternally embodied and still have their meaningful flash of supernormal or extra - sensory perception, and glimpse of something that happened long ago in our linear time.

But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5

The passage of time is simply an illusion created by our brains.

Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

I have wondered about time all my life.

Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is

Life only makes any sense if we can see time how God does. Past, present, and future all at once.

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must think of God as the whole page on which the line is drawn.

If life were a movie, physical reality would be the entire DVD: Future and past frames exist just as much as the present one.

In space-time everything which for each of us constitutes the past, the present and the future is given en bloc...Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them.

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything.

In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by a little. That doesn't mean anything. For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious.

The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too.

The past is a kind of future that has already happened.

I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.