Smilla's Sense of Snow

by Peter Høeg

Very few people know how to listen. Their haste pulls them out of the conversation, or they try internally to improve the situation, or they’re preparing what their entrance will be when you shut up and it’s their turn to step on stage.

A child who is born is something to seek out, something to search for, a star, a northern light, a column of energy in the universe. And a child who dies—that’s an abomination.

When my mother didn’t come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left.

Which contain Denmark’s most expensive condominiums. Three million kroner for nine hundred square feet. But then there’s also a brick wall five feet thick to beat your head against when you figure out the price per square foot. And beams of Pomeranian pine to

hang yourself from if the wall doesn’t do the trick. He has written down her phone number next to her name.

If you want to know who the real heroes of world history are, just look at the mothers.

Love this!

Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease. I refuse to listen to it. I refuse to be saddled with these orgies of emotional pettiness.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless.