Quotes from Tarjei Vesaas

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

Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.

Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors.

His face was neither handsome nor anything else. It just was.

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.

The darkness at the sides of the road. It possesses neither form nor name, but whoever passes here knows when it comes out and follows after and sends shudders like rippling streams down his back.

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

I like the modern form. Anyone who absolutely has to understand everything he sees misses a lot. It's not always true that obscure words come from obscure thoughts.

This gave him another opportunity to use one of those words that hung before him, shining and alluring. Far away in the distance there were more of them, dangerously sharp. Words that were not for him, but which he used all the same on the sly, and which had an exciting flavour and gave him a tingling feeling in the head. They were a little dangerous, all of them.

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.

Draum om nedsnødde bruer Med vi står fell snøen tettare. Kåpearmen din blir kvit. Kåpearmen min blir kvit. Dei går mellom oss som nedsnødde bruer. Men nedsnødde bruer er frosne. Inni her er det levande varmt. Varm under snøen er armen din ei sæl vekt på min. Det snør og snør på stille bruer. Bruer ingen veit om.

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.

Fear can resemble a crackling sound in a frozen ditch.

Words, words. No more words now. Here is my thirsting hand.

They themselves have lent it life; light and life to the dead block of ice, and to the silent time that follows midnight. Before they came the waterfall had been roaring, despondent and unconcerned, and the colossus of ice had been merely death, completed and mute. They did not know what they had brought with them before they were ensnared by the play between what has been and what is to come.

The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you.

The promise was a strong tie, hard, but I knew where I stood. If it's gone, I don't know where I am. When there's a strong scent in the spring twilight, I know least of all.

Lovnad i djupaste snøen frå Siss til Unn: Det lovar eg deg at eg ikkje vil tenke på noko anna enn deg. Tenke på alt eg veit om deg. Tenke på deg heime og på skolen, og på skolevegen. Tenke på deg heile dagen, og dersom eg vaknar om natta.

You no longer know, amid all this, if what hurt still matters— — Tarjei Vesaas, from "Between Blue Shadows," Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas (Black Widow Press, 2018;first published 2000)

Was this happiness? Happiness had come to him on a bare, rocky island, without any kind of warning. He hadn't done anything to bring it about. He could even make sharp-witted remarks.

Vi er treblåsarar, lokka av ting vi ikkje står imot.

I say again, you must feel you are freed. It's not right for you to go on as you are. It's not like you. You're a different person. Don't answer. It's not meant to be answered. But it's like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.

Kanske vi träffas när du blivit vuxen. Gå nu och lägg dig och sov.

There were things here too that could not be described as either the one or the other - but they belonged to such a place and one had to accept everything as it came