142 Quotes by Karl Ove Knausgård
- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have to write. You can't see what's happening now or what's going to happen, so you just dive into it and write.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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I'm not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I'm interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That's the way music works for me. It's purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That's just it.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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I try to write about small insignificant things. I try to find out if it's possible to say anything about them. And I almost always do if I sit down and write about something. There is something in that thing that I can write about. It's very much like a rehearsal. An exercise, in a way.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that's when you can write.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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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. One single second, one single landscape, in which what happens activates and deactivates what has already happened in endless chain reactions, like the processes that take place in the brain, perhaps, where cells suddenly bloom and die away, all according to the way the winds of consciousness are blowing.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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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 he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it.
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- Author Karl Ove Knausgård
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As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.
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