Quotes from Peter Høeg

So I was damaged. It said so, in so many words – that it was difficult, if not impossible, for me to establish stable emotional relationships – in other words, to have any deep feelings.

De satte kurs mot kyrkan, arm i arm. En lång fräknig kvinna, i vars underliv säd från tre olika män förgäves försökte hålla sams. Och en gaselliknande flicka med en funktionspromille på 1,2 som höll sig upprätt och någorlunda klar enbart på grund av väninnans stöd, B-vitaminerna och sin nyfikenhet.

Any race of people that allows itself to be graded on a scale designed by European science will appear to be a culture of higher primates.

20.500 kycklingar, sa hon. Om dagen. För att föda London. 5.800 grisar. 1.520 nötkreatur. 6.000 får. Enligt The Meat and Livestock Commission. Staden intar dagligen två miljoner kilo animaliskt protein. Man skulle kunna betrakta London som en monstruös maskin för bearbetning av husdjur.

Skriv, sa hon. "Din kropp betyder mer för mig än allt randigt fläsk som finns på Smithfield Charkuterimarknad.

Even then one sensed that it must be a rule. That time could not be something that passed all by itself but was something one had to hold one to. And that, when one let go of it, that moment was very significant.

I en liten svart väska plockade hon ihop vad en kvinna behöver, nycklar, pengar, läppstift, eyeliner, näsduk, en teckning av en apas tänder, och en liten plastflaska med sprit.

Deras kärlek var som lek, utan brådska, utan desperation och i stort sett utan riktning. Vad de försökte var att surfa så länge som möjligt på den heta yta de hade under sig.

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.

Wydoro?le? znaczy najpierw zapomnie?, a potem zaprzeczy? temu, co by?o wa?ne, gdy si? by?o dzieckiem.

To the earth shall you return.

I have sat in the dark and looked at them both, the child and the woman. And the feeling has become too much. It is not sorrow or joy; it is the weight and the pressure of having been brought into their lives, and of knowing that if one were ever to be separated from them, it would mean your obliteration.

One can only ask to play as well as possible the notes one is given.

That was what we meant by science. That both question and answer are tied up with uncertainty, and that they are painful. But that there is no way round them, And that one hides nothing; instead everything is brought out into the open.

When you are in the company of people who look down upon themselves as though they were animals, you too become like an animal. Or worse, because animals do not despise themselves.

Since we met, ever since that first time when we each sat on a toilet, up against the radiator, ever since then I have never been completely alone, even after you left me. Before that there had never really been anything in my life. But once someone has stood under the cold shower just so that you can stay under the warm one, then you can never really be totally alone again.

To touch time. That, I suppose, is what life for me has been about since then.

Time is something you have to hold on to.

Reading snow is like listening to music. To describe what you've read is like explaining music in writing.

But no trouble is so great that you can't buy your way out of it.

Any grading system is meaningless. Every attempt to compare cultures with the intention of determining which is the most developed will never be anything other than one more bullshit projection of Western culture's hatred of its own shadows.

There's not a single human being who doesn't find it a relief to be forced to tell the truth.

Technological culture has not destroyed the peoples of the Arctic Ocean. Believing that would be to think too highly of culture. It has simply acted as a catalyst, a cosmic model for the potential - which lies in every culture and every human being - to centre life around that particularly Western mixture of greed and naïveté. What they want to coerce is the Other, the vastness, that which surrounds human beings. It is the sea, the earth, the ice.

The knives I keep in my apartment are just sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their capacity. I don't need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go and split my throat. Against such a contingency it's nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbour.