The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it.
W. G. SebaldHow I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a different nation, or better still, to none at all.
W. G. SebaldLike our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.
W. G. SebaldTo set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.
W. G. Sebald