W. G. Sebald Quotes

After I die, I'll be forgotten.

Oh, I'll be forgotten too, don't worry.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

Oblivion is the rule and fame the exception, of humanity.

I don't give a toss about being remembered after my death.

One-hundred years from now, nobody's going to remember that I played for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays - nobody!

We all go to our grave thinking that we will never be forgotten, and we are forgotten ten minutes later.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.

Just to be remembered is good enough for me. Lots of people are forgotten.

When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.

The only 'afterlife' is what other people remember of you.

Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.

People will forget me pretty quick.

In Hollywood, you can live alongside very famous but still incredibly boring people. I've never wanted to be immortal. Even if nobody remembers me after my death, it's still okay with me.

Fame or infamy, either one is preferable to being forgotten when you have passed from this realm.

When I'm dead are they going to remember me ? I don't really think about it, it's up to them. When I'm dead, who cares ? I don't.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

Seeking to perpetuate one's name on earth is like writing on the sand by the seashore; to be perpetual it must be written on eternal shores.

How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside and forgotten.

Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten

I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?

Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.

To be remembered at all is an achievement of sorts.