15 Quotes by Tarjei Vesaas

What can you do when everyone around you is strong and clever?

What you want most you push away from you. You want more than you care to admit.

They were floating, almost at one with the darkness, reflecting no light. Their footsteps could not be heard. But their breathing could, and perhaps the heart. They mingled with other almost inaudible nocturnal stirrings, like a small vibration in long wires.

Four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking-glass. Questions shooting out and then hiding again. I don’t know: Gleams and radiance, gleaming from you to me, from me to you, and from me to you alone – into the mirror and out again, and never an answer about what this is, never an explanation.

The pine needles stretch their tongues and sing an unfamiliar nocturnal song. Each tongue is so small that it cannot be heard; together the sound is so deep and powerful that it could level the hills if it wished.

Fear can resemble a crackling sound in a frozen ditch.