Quotes by Norwegian Authors - Page 4

Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.
Varg Vikernes
Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.
Tarjei Vesaas
In Afghanistan a woman’s longing for love is taboo. It is forbidden by the tribes’ notion of honor and by the mullahs. Young people have no right to meet, to love, or to choose. Love has little to do with romance; on the contrary, love can be interpreted as committing a serious crime, punishable by death.
Åsne Seierstad
..he was 'nuts about her', as the parlance of the day had it, as if it were generally recognised that love and madness are adjoining rooms with extremely porous walls.
Jan Kjærstad
I wonder whether the Christmas feeling has anything to do with the sixth sense. Perhaps we're a little more the angels at Christmas than we are during the rest of the year. And Christmas is about all the other senses. I can smell Christmas, I can taste Christmas, and I can see and hear it.
Jostein Gaarder
And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.
Sigrid Undset
I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore nothing really to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.
Per Petterson
impossible situations can arise on other planets too. We don’t need to think that we’re the only ones who struggle and fight.
Gunnhild Øyehaug
Inspiration do not come and cannot be found, it has to exist - somewhere, somehow. Do believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in this world, and do believe that your words can be magical. Because I know they can be and I know they are. If you feel that you are lost in your own mind, don’t think, just write. Sometimes we have to erase our thoughts and memories to gain enough strength to be able to write down our inner thoughts. If you don’t know what it is, if you think it’s ridiculous or silly, you’re definitely on the right way. Sometimes you will hate your words and sometimes you will love them. This is the fun part of greatness in which the other part definitely will be your devil. Remember; with greatness comes obstacles.
Liv-Christine Hoem
Attributing to another author, "Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep.
Karl Ove Knausgård
It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.
Jostein Gaarder
I don't mean to mock the gods, but Freyja seems to me a bitch.- Hjalti Skjeggjason
Robert Ferguson
You know too little and it doesn't exist. You know too much and it doesn't exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the THERE itself. There, that is writing's location and aim. But how to get there?
Karl Ove Knausgård
For life, it's very, very bad to be sensitive, but for a writer, it's very good.
Karl Ove Knausgård
Are you dying?"Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry.
Jo Nesbø
Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.
Jo Nesbø
But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.
Jo Nesbø
Everything you know gained from experience
Jostein Gaarder
I never tried to ingratiate myself with great writers. When a great writer has nothing to say, he does something else, like chopping firewood. A great writer doesn't try to find something to write about, he only writes when he has to. I was no great writer. I've always had the need to unload my thoughts, and so had to live with a kind of mental incontinence, but I've never felt forced to write a novel. Nor, for that matter, have I ever chopped firewood.
Jostein Gaarder
You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings.
Sigrid Undset
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it,” Harry answered. “It’s a methodology.
Jo Nesbø
The inextinguishable lesbian spark. You've surely heard about it? The one that was first ignited at Lesbos, because Sappho was so sad every time a young woman left the academy that she wrote her a poem. Fancy being sad because someone leaves! Perverted, that's what I call it. Don't you?
Gerd Brantenberg
The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.
Thorstein Veblen
The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.
Thorstein Veblen
Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop. But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change.
Knut Hamsun
We don't learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils
Jostein Gaarder
Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus est!' " He crowed these words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edvin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.The monk laughed himself: "Ay, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: 'Ubi, ubi, ubi.' "But the goat bleated, and said: 'Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.' "And the sheep so longed to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: 'Eamus, eamus!' "And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. 'Volo, volo, volo!' it said.
Sigrid Undset
Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.
Jostein Gaarder
The difficult is what takes a little time. The impossible is what takes a little longer.
Fridtjof Nansen
One day I have to wake up and realize that you are gone.
Liv-Christine Hoem
I don’t care too much about talking, but I don’t like being alone.
Ida Løkås
The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest men are the most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
What do we mean by ‘crazy’? What do we mean by ‘mad’? At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?
Jo Nesbø
Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning.
Jostein Gaarder
The pain we feel in separation is the price we pay for love.
Hatef Mokhtar
Torvald: I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora--bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves. Nora: But hundreds of thousands of women have done!
Henrik Ibsen
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
Henrik Ibsen
Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks the face. It is as though someone else is looking at us, from somewhere inside the face, where everything is different. One can hardly be closer to another human soul.
Karl Ove Knausgård
We cry when something is sad. Then we often shed a tear when something's beautiful as well. When something's funny or ugly, we laugh. Perhaps we are sad when something is beautiful because we know that it won't last for ever. Then, we start laughing when something is ugly because we understand that it's only a joke.
Jostein Gaarder
It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.
Fridtjof Nansen
Can you feel it? The vibration? It’s the energy from everyone around us. It’s in the air. If you’re dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It’s true!- Runa Molnes
Jo Nesbø
You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice--that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should.
Knut Hamsun
God is forgotten, the mighty dollar has taken his place and the mechanic cannot ease the troubled soul. The road is closed. Under circumstances such as these America only increases speed. America will not stop for anything, it wants to get on, go on, forge a way ahead. Should America turn back? Absolutely not! It simply increases the pace a hundredfold, acts the hurricane and whips life up to a white heat. In Europe nowadays we have the word Americanism, the old days had festina lente.
Knut Hamsun
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
Henrik Ibsen
Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn't. Both had always existed. Neither could be chosen.
Karl Ove Knausgård
If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.
Jostein Gaarder
Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.
Jostein Gaarder
The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone
Jostein Gaarder
We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.
Jostein Gaarder
Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think i could ever do that.
Jo Nesbø
...you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.
Per Petterson
No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.
Knut Hamsun
Young hearts have their unfathomable depths.
Knut Hamsun
Doesn't matter where you go, home is uphill
Gunnar Staalesen
But life does not consist of words.Life consists of reality.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
In the eyeball there is a clash between creation and reflection. The two-way globes of sight are magical revolving doors where the creative spirit meets itself in the created spirit. The eye that surveys the universe is the universe's own eye.
Jostein Gaarder
It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.
Jostein Gaarder
The breeze is cold and refreshing, I draw the night into my lungs and try to calm myself down.
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold
For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,on the star tree,pale with luminousocean leaves.
Rolf Jacobsen