Quotes from Erik Christian Haugaard

The fairy tale belongs to the poor...I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.

Now he understood clearly that roads do divide, at the crossroad there is a choice, and blinding oneself to it is a form of choosing, too; it is the fool's way, the coward's way.

What I have told you is not completely true. You should beware, for often in this story, my words will be spoken out of bitterness, out of hate. The scream of the poor is not always just; but if you do not listen to it, then you will never understand justice.

We were happy. I know I ought to be able to tell you about it, yet I cannot, for while a nightmare will stay with you like hunger, when you awake from a happy dream, you have no memory of it.

Those soldiers belonging to the victorious side whose blood has oozed into the ground and whose hearts have ceased beating, have they partaken in the triumph as well as those who are unscarred and busy draining cups of sake to each other's glorious deeds? I rather think they belong instead to the defeated." ... "You mean that those who are killed all belong to the defeated, regardless of which side they were on?

The young need their sleep and their dreams; only we who are old dream best when we are awake.

I had read history too closely, read of Caesar and the Roman Empire. I had not noticed that in the books there were white spaces between each line; the white spaces are there to remind you of the unspoken, unwritten truth. When one only reads the words and does not read what is not written in the book, then one will never learn to understand.

Who understands war: the solders? the homeless ones? Mussolini? Or the leaders of the English and the Americans? No, nobody understands war, they only think they do. Maybe the earth that drinks up the blood understands it and says: "How foolish is man. Of all the animals that lives upon me, he is the cleverest and the most foolish.

I was not frightened as they were, for the very violence of his threats showed how weak he was.

In 'Hakon's of Rogen's Saga', I have attempted to tell the story of a boy who lived at the end of the Viking period. It was not written for 'youth,' in the sense that I have blunted my pen before I started. I abhor those writers who have not the skill to keep the attention of adults, and therefore think themselves equipped to write for children. I have done my best, and I leave you to be my critic.

I shall not quarrel with another man's road to salvation if he will allow me to wander along mine.

there are those who are cursed to live in times when death seems to come out of season, when the winter of a man's life may leap upon him in the midst of summer greenness.

No-one can own our Lord Buddha. That would be a foolish claim, but the roads that lead to him, the Way... That is a different matter. They are all filled with toll-gates, like the roads of Japan, and the monks collect the fees.

Mans vanity transgresses death

When I saw her figure standing on Ulv Hunger's ship, I realized she was my first love. Oh, do not laugh! Go and ask your grandfather who was his first love, and when he answers, 'Your grandmother', ask him again. He will smile, for such is the pain of first love that it leaves no bitterness behind.