Quotes from Knut Hamsun

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop. But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change.

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word.

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)

Og kjærligheten blev verdens ophav og verdens hersker, men alle dens veier er fulle av blomster og blod, blomster og blod.

I have no respect to merchants and preachers; as far as I'm concerned, their only talent is coming up with the right word at the right time. What is a professional preacher, really? He is a kind of middleman who for the wrong reasons tries to make people buy his goods. The more he sells, the more his stock rises. The louder he hawks his wares, the larger his business grows.

Love is God's first word, the first thought that sailed through his mind. When he said: Let there by light! there was love. And he was well-pleased with what he had made, nor did he wish any of it unmade. And love was the world's origin and the world's ruler; but all its ways are filled with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.

I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all.

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.

There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me...

Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

What does the world know? Nothing! You simply get used to something, you accept it and acknowledge it, because your teacher has acknowledged it before you; everything is just a supposition—indeed, even time, space, motion, matter are suppositions. The world knows nothing, it merely accepts things…

What would it profit us, after all, even from a purely practical viewpoint, if we stripped life of all poetry, all dreams, all beautiful mysteries, all lies? What is truth, can you tell me that? You see, we only advanced by way of symbols, and we change the symbols as we progress.

And love was creation's source,creation's ruler; but all love's ways are strewn with blossoms and blood, blossoms and blood.

I'll exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.

A country preacher could not have looked more full of milk and honey than this formidable writer, whose words had always left long bloody marks wherever they fell.

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.

A swarm of tiny noxious animals had bored a way into my inner man and hollowed me out.

If she only knew that all of his poems had been written to her and no one else, every single one, even the one to Night, even the one to the Spirit of the Swamp. But that was something she should never know.

What have you done to your eyes? They're all red. Have you been crying?' 'No,' he answers, laughing, 'but I've been staring into my fairy tales, where the sun is very strong.

In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.

Takva je ljubav. Ona može da uništi ?oveka, i nanovo ga podigne i preporodi. Danas može da voli mene, sutra tebe, a ve? sutra uve?e nekog stranca, toliko je nestalna. Ali može i da bude ?vrsta kao nesalomljiv pe?at, može neugasivo da plamti do samrtnog ?asa.