“I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running on...”

“Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and wor...”

“Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to adm...”

“Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.”

“I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in 'The Leopard,' in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes t...”

“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...”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found h...”

“Nature can counsel nothing but crime.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”