W. G. Sebald Quotes about Memories

One has the impression that something is stirring inside [photographs] - it is as if one can hear little cries of despair, gémissements de désespoir... as if the photographs themselves had a memory and were remembering

One has the impression that something is stirring inside [photographs] - it is as if one can hear little cries of despair, gémissements de désespoir... as if the photographs themselves had a memory and were remembering us and how we, the surviving, and those who preceded us, once were.

W. G. Sebald

Memories, Despair, Littles

In my photographic work I was always especially entranced... by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them.

W. G. Sebald

Memories, Night, Reality

W.G. Sebald (2014). “Austerlitz”, p.96, Vintage Canada

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

W. G. Sebald

Memories, Happy Life, Mind

...the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on.

W. G. Sebald

Memories, Thinking, Darkness

W. G. Sebald (2013). “Austerlitz”, p.34, Penguin UK