A Man in Love

by Karl Ove Knausgård

Saying what you believe others want to hear is of course a form of lying. Hence the difference between Anders’s and my social behavior was only one of degree. Even though his corroded trust and mine corroded integrity, the result was basically the same: a slow erosion of the soul.

Innocence is related to stupidity.

“How long have they been together?” “Six years.” “Was she thinking of leaving him?” “No, not at all. On the contrary, she wants children with him.” “So why the flirting?” I asked. Geir looked at me. “She wants to have her cake and eat it, too, obviously.”

“The point is that all this is about perspective. Seen in one way, everything offers pleasure. Seen in another, just sorrow and misery.

“I can’t talk to her! I have no real contact with her. It’s just platitudes and words and how fantastic this and that is.

I was sitting at the living room table, alone, and eating shrimp at top speed,

If I keeled over now, and had a few seconds, perhaps minutes, to think before it was all over I would think the opposite. That I hadn’t accomplished anything, I hadn’t seen anything, I hadn’t experienced anything. I want to live. But why don’t I live then? Why, when I’m on board a plane or in a car imagining it’s going to crash, why do I think that’s not so bad? That it doesn’t matter? That I might just as well die as live? For this is what I think more often than not. Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatest of them all, because it is the only one that sins against life.