142 Quotes by Karl Ove Knausgård

  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    I have always been able to recognize the lonely. They don't walk the same way as other people. It is as if they don't carry any joy, any spark within themselves, whether they are women or men. I am looking for a word for the opposite of loneliness. I would like to find a different word to love, which is far too overworked and inadequate. Tenderness, peace of mind and soul, togetherness?

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    That was where I had to go, to the essence, to the inner core of human existence. If it took forty years, so be it, it took forty years. But I should never lose sight of it, never forget it, that was where I was going. There, there, there.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    Pomyślałem, że proza jest czymś, w czym można odpocząć, tak jak można odpocząć w jakimś miejscu, pod drzewem albo na leżaku w ogrodzie, i że to jest wartością samą w sobie.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    De wereld was grenzeloos en onoverzichtelijk, het aantal gebeurtenissen eindeloos, het heden een openstaande deur die in de wind van de geschiedenis stond te klapperen. Maar zo voelde het niet. Het voelde alsof de wereld bekend was, volledig ontdekt en in kaart gebracht, alsof hij zich niet langer in onvoorziene richtingen kon bewegen, alsof er niets nieuws en verrassends meer kon gebeuren.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    For that’s how it is, we cover up our mistakes and failings, we invent stories that put ourselves in a more favorable light. Self-deception is perhaps the most human thing of all.

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  • Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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    All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back, I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me.

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