93 Quotes by Peter Høeg

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

When my mother didn't come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left. You can demand something like this of yourself as an unattainable ideal. After that, you have to remind yourself about it every time you're sloppy about something. For me that means 250 times a day.

Back then I could not understand one word of what I read.Reading did, however, give me heart. Even if you cannot understand what you are reading you can get something from books.

- Vad är en ängel, frågade apan.Madelene skakade på huvudet.- Det har jag aldrig riktigt förstått, sa hon. Men kanske är det en tredjedel gud, en tredjedel djur och en tredjedel människa.

deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive.

In the long run, you can never be any better than your surroundings. When you are in the company of people who look down upon themselves as though they are animals, you, too, become like an animal. Or worse, because animals do not despise themselves.

On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

With age I have voluntarily chosen certain limitations. I don't have the energy to start over again. To learn new skills or fight my own personality or figure out diesel engines.