That was how things were back ...

That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.
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 Joseph Roth

Quotes from the same author

That is originally why the concept evolved to include accessories. We found that furniture sells better when you show it with accessories.
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 Joseph Roth
Although the noise of the chattering clientele is much more significant than the topics of their chatter, it does finally constitute that type of social and indistinct expression that we refer to as rhubarb. The very particular volume in which people tell each other their news seems to generate all by itself that acoustic chiaroscuro, a sounding murk, in which every communication seems to lose its edges, truth projects the shadow of a lie, and a statement seems to resemble its opposite.
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 Joseph Roth
I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.
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 Joseph Roth
A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.
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 Joseph Roth