Quotes from Knut Hamsun

My head was emptying and emptying, and in the end it sat light and void on my shoulders. I percieved this gaping emptiness in my head with my whole body, I felt hollowed out from top to toe.

Slik var kjærligheten. Den kunde ruinere sin mand, gjenreise ham og brændemeærke ham igjen; den kunde elske mig idag, dig imorgen og ham imorgen nat, så ubestandig var den. Men den kunde også holde fast som et ubrytelig segl og blusse like uutslukelig til dødens stund, for så evig var den.

The dark monsters out there would suck me up when night came on, and they would carry me far across the sea and through strange lands where no humans lived.

Never stand around saying 'Poor thing' and being pitiful when things are being killed. It makes them tough and harder to kill. Remember that!

No matter how much I kept telling myself that I was behaving like an idiot, it was no use.

A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.

Asked what love is, some reply: It is only a wind whispering among the roses and dying away. But often it is an inviolable seal that endures for life, endures till death. God has fashioned it of many kinds and seen it endure or perish.

Well, bless my soul, what stupid creatures one has to mix with in this world!

Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all. A dull and desolate existence? Nay, least of all. A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition.

Genius in the popular sense has become common. (...) 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.

I would be beholden to no man, not even for a blanket.

When I got outside, I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you are not a bungler.

There was a merciless gnawing in my chest, a queer silent labor was going on in there. I pictured a score of nice teeny-weeny animals that cocked their heads to one side and gnawed a bit, then cocked their heads to the other side and gnawed a bit, lay perfectly still for a moment, then began anew and bored their way in without a sound and without haste, leaving empty stretches behind them wherever they went.

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

An intense, peculiar exhalation of light and colour emanates from these fantasies of mine. I start with surprise as I note one good thing after another, and tell myself that this is the best thing I have ever read. My head swims with a sense of satisfaction; delight inflates me; I grow grandiose.

He never read a book but often thought about God; it was unavoidable, a matter of simplicity and awe. The starry sky, the soughing of the forest, the solitude, the big snow, the majesty of the earth and what was above the earth filled him with a deep devoutness many times a day. He was sinful and godfearing; on Sundays he washed himself in honour of the holy day but worked as usual.

If I happened to find a diamond one day, I would call it Dagny, because the very sound of your name thrills me. I only wish that I could forever hear your name, hear it spoken by all men and beasts, by every mountain and every star. I wish I were deaf to every sound except your name ringing in my ears day and night for the rest of my life.

Gladness is intoxicating. I fire my gun and an unforgettable echo answers from crag to crag, floats out over the sea and rings in some sleepless helmsman's ears. What am I glad about? A thought that comes to me, a memory, a sound in the forest, a human being. I think of her—I close my eyes and stand still on the road and think of her, counting the minutes.

Man sværmer om sommeren, så holder man op for den gang. Men nogen sværmer hele sitt liv og står ikke til å forandre.

Gud hvor De ser ut som en sån melankolsk fabelkat.

La oscuridad reinaba en torno a mí; todo estaba tranquilo, todo. Pero en las alturas zumbaba el eterno canto de la atmósfera, ese bordoneo lejano, sin modulaciones, que jamás se calla. Presté atención tanto tiempo a ese murmullo sin fin, a ese murmullo morboso, que comenzó a turbarme. Eran, sin duda, las sinfonías de los mundos girando en el espacio por encima de mí, las estrellas que entonaban un himno.

The sad rocking chair in the corner was actually a joke of a chair: if one started laughing at it, one could die laughing. It was too low for a grown man, and besides, it was so tight, one needed a shoehorn to get back out of it. In short, this room was simply not furnished in a way appropriate to intellectual effort, and I did not intend to keep it any longer.

During those days, both the bed and my little rickety table were swimming in notes and scribbled-over manuscripts that I took turns working on, adding new ideas that occurred to me in the course of the day, crossing out material or freshening up the dead passages with a lively word here or there, and pushing on from sentence to sentence with great labor.

Det kan regne og storme, det er ikke derpaa det kommer an, ofte kan en liten Glæde bemægtige sig en paa en Regnveirsdag og faa en til at gaa avsides med sin Lykke. Man stiller sig da op og gir sig til at se ret frem, nu og da ler man tyst og ser sig omkring. Hvad tenker man paa? En klar Rute i et Vindu, en Solstraale i Ruten, en Utsigt til en liten Bæk og kanske til en blaa Rift på Himlen. Det behøver ikke at være mere.