Author

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.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the protagonist to think thoughts I had never myself thought.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

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.

From Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard

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