Quotes from Linn Ullmann

Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time, I want precision. And in order to be precise about stuff, you have to get personal. Symbolism is very boring.

Fairy tales and folk tales have always played a role in my writing in one way or another.

I began writing The Cold Song in the months following my fathers death, when I felt this sense of loss, disappearance, of being right in the middle of life and wondering: What now? How to proceed?

What I have always loved most in men is imperfection.

Jag vill inte dö, jag vill leva, men om hon dör finns det ingen plats för mig i den här världen.

In order to write about real people - parents, children, lovers, friends, enemies, brothers, uncles, or the occasional passerby - it is necessary to make them fictional. I believe this is the only way of breathing life into them. To remember is to look around, again and again, equally astonished every time.

Her deepest longing, perhaps, was to be loved unconditionally, and at the same time be left in peace. But she never told anyone. It is shameful and egotistical to hope for unconditional love and at the same time want to be left in peace. The mother's inner worlds were neatly sealed—dark, gilded worlds.

My father had the rare ability to make others feel as though they were the one and only. That they were seen, heard, chosen. He would take you by the hand and say, Come with me, and for a brief or a long moment you might think you were the first person he has ever said this to. That it was you and him against the world.

Om man vill vara högtidlig, kan man säga att jag hade hittat hem, har han sagt, och om man vill vara lustig, kan man tala om kärlek vid första ögonkastet.

Her deepest longing, perhaps, was to be loved unconditionally, and at the same time be left in peace. But she never told anyone. It is shameful and egotistical to hope for unconditional love and at the same time want to be left in peace.

Occasionally, for a fleeting, horrified moment, she caught a glimpse of herself. The shrill note in her voice. The stupid words. It was as if there were something heavy weighing on her tongue that had to be removed immediately—that expression, It's time I took matters in hand, uttered in such a phony way—and out of her mouth she plucked a big, shiny bug. And then another. And one more. Her mouth full of big, shiny bugs.

A man wakes up and for a few moments he experiences everything exactly as it is. Jon wrote: A man wakes up and is lucid. It doesn't last long, though, he thought, that kind of lucidity. If it did you wouldn't be able to stand it, it would kill you. Let