Quotes by Peter Høeg

“Basker possesses three kinds of bite: a snap, a nip, and then something like a buzz saw and an angle grinder mounted on a bear trap.”

“It may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.”

“deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive.”

“I've had the privilege of learning foreign languages. Instead of merely speaking a watered-down form of my mother tongue, like most people, I'm also helpless in two or three other languages.”

“Danes express their strongest feelings in conjunction with food. That became clear to me the first time I was out visiting friends with Moritz. When I took a third helping of cookies, he looked str...”

“Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease.”

“One should be good to oneself. Especially when one is alone.”

“One can only ask to play as well as possible the notes one is given.”

“Cantor illustrated the concept of infinity for his students by telling them that there was once a man who had a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and the hotel was fully occupied. Then one mo...”

“No matter how close people get, they never reach each other. Including us now. Even now, there's a place where each of us is alone.”

“... Because one who seeks the highest must not leave any path untried.”

“We all try to camouflage the monotony, But it takes a lot of energy. To insist on being special all the time. When we're so much like one another anyway. Our triumphs are the same. Our pain. Try fo...”

“Deep within every blind, absolute love grows a hatred toward the beloved, who now holds the only existing key to happiness”

“Every theoretical explanation is a reduction of intuition.”

“Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.”

“There is a pleasant firmness of tone when one is in harmony with oneself. Even when it's a weak ethic one is resonating with.”

“The motive for our actions doesn't lie ahead of us. It's something behind us that we're trying to escape.”