To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing.
A mob is not, as is so often said, mindless. A mob is single-minded.
One of the chief characteristics of a mob is its quickness. It is sudden. It pounces.
Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most.
Throughout his career, W.G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur.