Ulla > Ulla's Quotes

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

“This is what I know - Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. My dog, who was dead in 1957, is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen. Maybe tomorrow.”
― Patti Smith, Year of the Monkey

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Some people have a love of their fellow man in their hearts, and others require a light anesthetic.”
― Garrison Keillor, Life among the Lutherans

“I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.”
― Molly Ivins

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I can’t speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself, I think that’s the deepest motivation, and it is so because I’m full of self-loathing and shame. Writing doesn’t make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

“Closure is an illusion, the winking of the eye of a storm. Nothing is completely resolved in life, nothing is perfect. The important thing is to keep living because only by living can you see what happens next." - on Murakami's ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage' in The New York Times”
― Patti Smith

“No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“It seems to me that the greatest adventure is to find a home in the world, particularly in the natural world, to earn a sense of belonging deeply to a place and to feel the deep response well up within you and become a part of you. When it is done, it can't be lost; the knowledge is as acute and sure as falling in love.”
― Cynthia Huntington, The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod

“I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.”
― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Når jeg læser, hvad de fandens præster siger om kærlighed, ved jeg, det er sandt. Kærlighed er ikke en følelse, man har for et andet menneske, det er noget, man beslutter sig for, og så er det hårdt arbejde resten af vejen.”
― Renée Toft Simonsen, Renée - At finde hjem

“Jeg vidste godt, hvor grænsen gik, det er en hårfin balance, og vupti er man væltet over til de skøre. Jeg var som teenager klar over, hvordan jeg skulle opføre mig for ikke at virke reelt tosset, jeg havde lært at kende forskel på virkelighed og fantasi. Men jeg blev ved med at hengive mig til mine fantasier, til egne universer.”
― Renée Toft Simonsen, Renée - At finde hjem

“Når folk senere i livet hørte, at Risten havde nordnorske aner, spurgte de ofte, om nordlyset ikke var et fantastisk syn. Jo, svarede hun så og skyndte sig at skifte emne. Sandheden var, at hun aldrig havde set det. Hun var jo ikke idiot.”
― Maren Uthaug

“Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Hvad ere en Naturbeskrivelse andet end en Oversaettelse? Endogså den meest vellykkede staaer ligesaalangt under Originalen som Himmelbjerget i Jylland under Himmelbjerget i Thibet. Derfor gunstige Læser! hav mig undskyldt, naar jeg ikke fortæller Dig alt hvad jeg her saae. Hvad jeg saae kunde jeg maaskee sige Dig: men hvorledes jeg saae det? Neppe! – Enkelthederne kunde jeg fremstille Dig een efter en anden, men Heelheden – alt paa eengang? – dertil – om “Du endog har Oere, har Tungen ikke Ord.” Min Pen er ingen Pensel. Rejs! Rejs selv til Himmelbjerget, og see!”
― Steen Steensen Blicher

“I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.”
― Miranda July, The First Bad Man

“What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Although I eventually completed... The Handmaid's Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale