Quotes by Karl Ove Knausgrd

“All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to”

“I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there stra...”

“Had the world been different, in my opinion, without mountains and oceans, plains and seas, deserts and forests, and consisted of something else, inconceivable to us, as we don't know anything othe...”

“Asbjrn had a nose, that was his great talent, I had never met anyone with such sureness of taste as him, but what use was it, part from being the hub student life revolved around? The essence of a ...”

“It was a fantastic feeling, but it left me restless because the most important thing in it was the longing, for what was going to be, not for what I did or had done.”

“There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy.”

“Then I met Linda and the sun rose.I can't find a better way to express it. The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. T...”

“Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea...”

“For a writer it was perhaps most important not to write, but to read. Read as much as you can because in so doing you won't lose yourselves, become unoriginal, what happens is the opposite, by doin...”

“Yes, we were good at using the grapevine. But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms.No one could beat us at that.None of this led any...”

“And it's a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. ...”

“The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though h...”

“The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, stre...”

“Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but ha...”

“Go somewhere you know nothing about and see what happens.”

“There's no difference between pulp fiction and highbrow fiction, one is as good as the other, the only difference is the aura they have, and that's determined by the people who read the stuff, not ...”

“In the streets outside everything was still. The hour before five was the only time of day this city slept. In my earlier life, during the twelve years I had lived in Bergen I used to stay up at ni...”

“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.”

“There is a sort of light surrounding Abel, something pure and strong radiates from him no matter where he is or what he's doing. Sometimes Cain thinks he possesses a soul without shadows. That's wh...”

“Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.”