Knausgaard Quotes

“Was it Jesus you saw a picture of?” he says and looks up at me. If it had not been for the friendly voice and the long pause before the question, I would have thought he was making fun of me. He finds it a little embarrassing that I am a Christian; all he wants is for me not to be different from the other kids, and of all the kids in the neighbourhood, his youngest son is the only one to call himself a Christian.
But he is really wondering about this.
I feel a flutter of joy because he actually cares, and at the same time I become a bit offended that he underestimates me like that.
I shake my head.
“It wasn’t Jesus,” I say.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1

“Jeg er hans sønn. Historien om ham, Kai Åge Knausgård, er historien om meg, Karl Ove Knausgård. Den har jeg fortalt. Jeg har overdrevet, jeg har lagt til, jeg har trukket fra, og det er mye jeg ikke har forstått. Men det er ikke ham jeg har beskrevet, det er mitt bilde av ham. Det er ferdig nå.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård

“But the moment I was alone others meant nothing to me. It wasn't that I disliked them, or nurtured feelings of loathing for them; on the contrary, I liked most of them, and the ones I didn't actually like I could always see some worth in, some attribute I could identify with, or at least find interesting, something which could occupy my mind for the moment. But liking them was not the same as caring about them. It was the social situation that bound me, the people within it did not.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“There was nothing left of my feelings for those I had just spent several hours with. The whole crowd of them could have burned in hell for all I cared.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“Av jord var de kommet, til jord skulle de bli, og i de få årene livet levde i dem, var det fra jorden det hentet sin kraft. Den eneste veien ut av det, var lenger inn i det. Lavt er pliktens himmel hvelvet, men det er en himmel. Under den gikk Lamek, og der fant han sin mening. Denne meningen hadde en fiende, det var lengselen etter noe annet, og den bekjempet han med det eneste middelet han kjente: mer arbeid. Arbeidet var således både flukten, og det han flyktet fra.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, A Time for Everything

“But what do you say to have any impact on a man who at one time admired the Spice Girls? To influence a man who once wrote an enthusiastic essay about the sitcom Friends?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2