142 Quotes by Karl Ove Knausgård


  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    Why didn't they drink? Why didn't everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    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 by the book itself. There's no such thing as 'the book itself.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    One night I had been listening to [Goo], downstairs with Espen, we had been smoking hash, and I was lost in the music, literally, I saw it as rooms and corridors, floors and walls, ditches and slopes, small forests between apartment blocks and railway lines, and didn't emerge from it until the song stopped, it was like drawing breath because the next minute a new song started and I was caught again.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    Everyone prioritizes. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    Everyone is asleep. I am playing Bon Iver; all the memories from the last time I played it, perhaps two years ago, flood back. Not as images but feelings. Only musiccan do this, can open the frozen tundra, but it is not only good, it also hurts. So much time passes, so much life is held back.

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