Melancholy Quotes

“because you isolate yourself after all, in isolation you work yourself deep into something, and if you want it enough then you get far enough inside, deep enough inside, and you can see something most other people haven’t seen, and what he saw, Vidme feels, as he walks in the wind and the rain, is the most important thing he has ever figured out in all the many years he has spent almost every day sitting and writing.”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy I & II

“... he just stood there, and then it was as if the light from her eyes surrounded him, like warmth, no, not like warmth! no, not like warmth, like light! yes, the light from her eyes surrounded him like light all around him! and in this light he was someone different from who he had been, he was not Lars from Hattarvåg any more, he was someone else, all his anxiety, all his fears, everything he lacked and that always filled him with anxiety, everything he longed for was as if fulfilled by the light from Helene Winckelmann’s eyes and he was calm, he was fulfilled, and he stood there...”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy

“...he just stood there, and then it was as if the light from her eyes surrounded him, like warmth, no, not like warmth! no, not like warmth, like light! yes, the light from her eyes surrounded him like light all around him! and in this light he was someone different from who he had been, he was not Lars from Hattarvåg any more, he was someone else, all his anxiety, all his fears, everything he lacked and that always filled him with anxiety, everything he longed for was as if fulfilled by the light from Helene Winckelmann’s eyes and he was calm, he was fulfilled, and he stood there...”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy

“Now he, Vidme, has for many years gone around and thought it was blasphemous to use expressions like the divine and God. People shouldn’t use expressions like that. Or if they do use expressions like the divine and God, then they shouldn’t mean anything by them. And now as he thinks this thought, Vidme sees before him all the despairing people who have tried to give meaning to their lives by saying that it’s God’s will that this or that happens, because the darkness has always been heavy, the wind hard, love has always, always, been somewhere between killing and caring, the ocean has always been hard, births even harder, and above it all there has always been an enormous sky. The blue ocean and the blue sky. Impenetrable darkness and whistling wind. And then a church, a house of prayer, up on the hill. A graveyard in darkness and rain. And there has to be a meaning to it all.”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy

“From the moment I wake up until it’s night I can hear your voice. I can see your eyes. Inside me is you. I miss you. I am coming to you. I am my longing for you. And you are waiting for me, now I’ll come to you. I’ll see you. I’ll hear your voice. And you speak so calmly and your voice fills your chest. You fill me, like the light fills its day. I am a darkness without you. I miss you. I am walking up the street, but I can’t see anything. I am my longing for you. And I hear laughter far behind me. But the laughter is just there, because in me is only my movement towards you. I am only a turning towards you. I am walking. I am walking to you, I am a turning towards you. I am my longing for you. I am only a turning towards you. I am walking. I am walking to you. I can’t do anything else, I can only be a movement turned towards you, whether you’re there or not. All I am is a movement towards you. A movement, a turning, towards you. I am nothing but you, but you, who are not there.”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy

“and when we get there, when we go into the room, I have to just go and sit down on a chair and then sit still and not say anything, I have to just sit and try not to think and whenever any thought does come to me I have to just try to dissolve it and make it disappear, as soon as it comes, everything that worries me, everything that makes me happy, I have to try to dissolve it so that all that’s left are remnants of something that then turn into nothing, or almost nothing, because that’s how it will get quiet inside me, there has to be a silence inside me, and in the silence I have to find peace deep inside me somewhere, and then, if I am in a state of grace, I can be filled with a cool light, not warmth, but a cool light, so shimmering, so heavy and weightless at the same time, so overwhelming, light like I’ve never seen before. And my father says that the strongest light is the light within you. And I ask what if I don’t feel a light. And my father says that people are not always in a state of grace, but it sometimes happens that grace is there, yes it does! and my father looks at me, and smiles.”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy

“El amor ha estado, como siempre, entre el asesinato y el cuidado.”
― Jon Fosse, Melancholy