Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think 'Out Stealing Horses' sounds more American for Americans than it does in Norway, and still, it is all there, everything that I wrote. It's amazing.
The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.
I was driving in Norway and found myself on pure ice. I lightly pressed the brakes but I still started skidding. The car spun round and round and collided head on with another car coming in the other direction. There was a five or ten-second period where I blacked out.
Norway, for some reason, I find Norway really fascinating, you really feel nature in that country. And then there is somewhere like Japan, which is the most interesting culturally because their whole psychology, how they think is so different to us and how I've grown up.
It's challenging to live in Anacortes. I lived in Olympia for five years, went on tour for a year, ended up in Norway for a winter, and ended up back in Anacortes. But I have a long life ahead of me. I'll probably live in many different places, and then die in Anacortes.
I think integration in Norway is, by all standards, going relatively well. People are working, taking education, learning the language. But, yes, it is a challenge. And democracy and democratic debate has to be open to take that debate openly and not push questions aside.
When I was 12, we began hosting exchange students from Norway, Sweden, Japan and Spain. I soon realized there was a whole world out there. I was determined to spend my sophomore year in high school abroad. My school taught only Spanish, but I wanted to go to France, and I did.
To be sure, political unions between European countries have often failed in the past, but usually only after relatively brief periods. Denmark and Iceland separated after 130 years; the unions between Spain and Portugal and between Sweden and Norway each lasted less than a century.
For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.
In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.
Ellen Galinsky's surveys at the Families and Work Institute pointed to a desirable norm for many parents for working not full-time, but part-time. And I get that. I mean, Norway has a 35-hour work week. That counts as part-time for us in the United States, you know. And Norway's doing well, by the way.
Look, I don't think President Obama would have bowed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia if he didn't have oil to the degree that the Saudis do. I think they and other producing states, almost all of whom, except Norway and Canada, are dictatorships or autocratic systems, have thrown their weight around because of oil.
A democratically governed national fracking fund should be set up, perhaps similar to what Norway and Alaska have. Areas of drilling should be rented to companies through public tender, with or without subsidies, and a rising share of profits beyond a negotiated upper limit should be deposited in the national capital fund.
The great gift of 'Incarceration Nations' is that, by introducing a wide range of approaches to crime, punishment, and questions of justice in diverse countries - Rwanda, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, Australia and Norway - it forces us to face the reality that American-style punishment has been chosen.
Our film society back home is so different from here. Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language. It's just figuring things out and understanding the codes and how the system of Hollywood compares to that of Norway. We don't even have agents. There's no studio system, no managers.
Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, complex and layered culture. They had their own laws, many of which protected women.
I won't lie, I didn't know there was a concert. I've always known about the Nobel Peace Prize and the different prizes given out for science and this and that, but I didn't know there was a concert the day after. When they said, 'You're going to perform in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize concert,' I was like, 'All right, I'm there.'
Nationalism in Norway was very strong in 1905, that we must be free of Sweden. But I must say, I'm not 100 percent sure that was a wise decision. We had the war; we were occupied by Germans from 1940 to '45. And if there had been one Scandinavian country, then it would not have been so very easy probably to go ahead with the occupation.
We can learn from all around the world. Germany, particularly, has been successful with rooftop solar generation. Other countries like Norway and Sweden have done work on it. Some of them have done offshore wind projects. So we're looking at learning from the best from all across the world. My approach is to get the best out of each one.
