Karl Ove Knausgard Quotes

"When I look back at that freedom of childhood, which is in a way infinite, and at all the joy and the intense happiness, now lost, I sometimes think that childhood is where the real meaning of life is located, and that we, adults, are its servants - that that's our purpose."

"Having a writer in the family is a curse - for the family. I do feel more or less guilty when I'm writing."

"As a person, I'm polite - I want to please."

"I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it."

"Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying."

"I have this habit to bow my head, as to look shorter, maybe as a result of an unconscious demand of not taking up so much space."

"The difficult thing for me is that I want basically to be a good man. That's what I want to be."

"Life develops, changes, is in motion. The forms of literature are not."

"It's one thing to be banal, stupid, and idiotic on the inside. It's another to have it captured in writing."

"My memory is basically visual: that's what I remember, rooms and landscapes. What I do not remember are what the people in these room were telling me. I never see letters or sentences when I write or read, but only the images they produce."

"Is literature more important than hurting people? You can't argue that. You can't say it. It's impossible."

"When it comes to memories of that iconic type, memories that are burned into you, I have maybe ten or so from my childhood. I'm a bad rememberer of situations. I forget almost everything as soon as it happens."

"I guess I have a talent for humiliation, a place within me that experience can't reach, which is terrible in real life but something that comes in handy in writing. It seems as though humiliation has become a career for me."

"The eye of God ends up inside, so that, in the end, you take care of judgment and punishment yourself."

"Concealing what is shameful to you will never lead to anything of value."

"My intention throughout has been to write, to create literature, and to be able to look people in the eye after I'd done it - the people I'd written about."

"Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life."

"I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell."

"I am happy because I am no longer an author."

"I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?"

"I do think readers should respect my privacy, but I don't get angry when I get personal questions, because I understand why."

"When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer."

"In my experience, when you're writing, you want the truth, and you don't want to be apologetic in any way. But there is something in writing, the complexity of it, that works against that aim."

"In 'Min Kamp,' I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read."

"In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out."

"When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world."

"I spent six years after my first novel and five years after my second without getting into a new book."

"On the floor by my bed, there are heaps of books I want to read, books I have to read, and books I believe I need to read."

"I have some friends, most of them are writers or editors, whose recommendations I trust blindly. There are some critics, too, whom I trust, but not many."

"Knut Hamsun's writing is magical. His sentences are glowing; he could write about anything and make it alive. Of contemporary writers, Thure Erik Lund is my definite favorite."