Only in the books written in earlier times did she sometimes think she found some faint idea of what it might be like to be alive.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the profound connection between literature and the human experience of life.
W. G. Sebald's quote suggests that older literature can provide insights or fragments of understanding about what it means to truly live. It highlights how written works from the past capture the essence of existence, prompting the reader to contemplate their own experiences and the nature of life itself.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of reading, one might quote Sebald to illustrate how literature enriches our understanding of life.
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.
When I was a boy, I'd hide under the kitchen table and wind string around the chairs. I have a sense now that I am pulling on those threads. The more I pull, the more it comes unraveled.
If you're based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages everywhere. On a bad day, returning to Germany brings back all kinds of spectres from the past.
The seasons and the years came and went...and always...one was, as the crow flies, about 2,000 km away - but from where? - and day by day hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract.
You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist.
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.
Many people despise those who spend their health, strength and money for the salvation of others, and call them mad. And yet it is they who will save many and be saved themselves.
America didnβt bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature.
The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.
History is a novel for which the people is the author.
The Christian is the most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world. He is like a traveler in an inn, perfectly satisfied with the inn and its accommodation, considering it as an inn, but putting quite out of all consideration the idea of making it his home.
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