Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a person, I'm polite - I want to please.
I am happy because I am no longer an author.
I have never been interested in presenting myself.
Life develops, changes, is in motion. The forms of literature are not.
Concealing what is shameful to you will never lead to anything of value.
Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.
I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.
When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.
The difficult thing for me is that I want basically to be a good man. That's what I want to be.
I spent six years after my first novel and five years after my second without getting into a new book.
The eye of God ends up inside, so that, in the end, you take care of judgment and punishment yourself.
Is literature more important than hurting people? You can't argue that. You can't say it. It's impossible.
Having a writer in the family is a curse - for the family. I do feel more or less guilty when I'm writing.
It's one thing to be banal, stupid, and idiotic on the inside. It's another to have it captured in writing.
In 'Min Kamp,' I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read.
On the floor by my bed, there are heaps of books I want to read, books I have to read, and books I believe I need to read.
I do think readers should respect my privacy, but I don't get angry when I get personal questions, because I understand why.
'My Struggle' came from a place of questioning and feelings of inauthenticity and frustration, and almost all of that is gone.
For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.
I have this habit to bow my head, as to look shorter, maybe as a result of an unconscious demand of not taking up so much space.
I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.
When I write something, I can't remember in the end if this is a memory or if it's not - I'm talking about fiction. So for me, it's the same thing.
I have some friends, most of them are writers or editors, whose recommendations I trust blindly. There are some critics, too, whom I trust, but not many.
My intention throughout has been to write, to create literature, and to be able to look people in the eye after I'd done it - the people I'd written about.
Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.
In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out.
Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.
I don't talk about feelings, but I write a lot about feelings. Reading, that's feminine; writing, that's feminine. It is insane - it's really insane - but it still is in me.
Knut Hamsun's writing is magical. His sentences are glowing; he could write about anything and make it alive. Of contemporary writers, Thure Erik Lund is my definite favorite.
I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?
If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.
As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.
The notion of what is public and what is private has been dissolved. My children see documentaries; they see Instagram. Everyone is very open: it has become less taboo to expose lives.
The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.
In my experience, when you're writing, you want the truth, and you don't want to be apologetic in any way. But there is something in writing, the complexity of it, that works against that aim.
When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.
When it comes to memories of that iconic type, memories that are burned into you, I have maybe ten or so from my childhood. I'm a bad rememberer of situations. I forget almost everything as soon as it happens.
I guess I have a talent for humiliation, a place within me that experience can't reach, which is terrible in real life but something that comes in handy in writing. It seems as though humiliation has become a career for me.
When I wrote my fictional novels, they always had a starting point of something real. Those images that are not real are exactly the same strength and power of the real ones, and the line between them is completely blurred.
I don't know why people do not read 'Mein Kampf' more regularly. It tells you first-hand about all the narcissism; you see that collapse in German culture. There is no chance that anyone could become a Nazi by reading that book.
Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that's when you can write.
I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell.
I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.
My memory is basically visual: that's what I remember, rooms and landscapes. What I do not remember are what the people in these room were telling me. I never see letters or sentences when I write or read, but only the images they produce.
I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.
When I started writing 'My Struggle,' my father was still an issue: someone I had in me every day, someone I would dream about - he was still a part of me. He was such a huge figure for me, and now he is just one among many, and that feels like a relief.
National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have to write. You can't see what's happening now or what's going to happen, so you just dive into it and write.
You don’t think when you play music, you just try to play and be in it. It is the same for me when the writing is going really well. It’s the same kind of feeling. I’m just in it. It’s not the words, it’s not the sentences, I’m not aware of it. Then it’s good.
When I look back at that freedom of childhood, which is in a way infinite, and at all the joy and the intense happiness, now lost, I sometimes think that childhood is where the real meaning of life is located, and that we, adults, are its servants - that that's our purpose.
I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That’s the way music works for me. It’s purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That’s just it.