53 Quotes by Per Petterson

I do consider myself a Norwegian writer, or a Scandinavian writer, as my family tree reaches into both Denmark and Sweden. I don't think about it, of course, when I am writing.

I do not think of literature as something confessional or therapeutic. I make sentences in order to be precise about experiences and things. I am urged by many things and no things in particular.

I don't know if nature is a direct literary influence on my writing, but it is certainly important to me. I take great joy in writing about it. It is something I have taken with me from my childhood; the body exposed to the threat of the physical world and at the same time being at home in it.

I grew up in the city. Both my mother and father were factory workers, and I loved the life in the 'metro.' Everybody saw me as a very urban guy. And I was.

Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.

To say that a family is happy I think is to diminish it, taking out what is interesting. Growing up, I don't think my family was any happier or unhappier than anyone else's. My mother and father should have been divorced or never even married. On the other hand, I remember many moments of happiness.

To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere.

If I just concentrate I can walk into memory's store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it....