Flaggermusmannen Quotes

“Everything you do leaves traces, doesn’t it. The life you’ve lived is written all over you, for those who can read.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“How's your girlfriend?'
‘Birgitta?’ Harry was quiet, ‘I don’t know. She wont talk to me. Feeling terrible, I hope.’
'Why do you hope she’s feeling terrible?’
‘I hope she loves me, of course.’
Sandra emitted a rasping laugh. ‘And how are you. Harry Holy?’
‘Terrible.’ Harry smiled sadly”
― Jo Nesbo, The Bat

“Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think i could ever do that.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Love is a greater mystery than death.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“In traditional crime fiction every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It’s bullshit! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Watching TV gives you confidence. When you see how stupid people generally are on the box it makes you feel smart. And scientific studies show that people who feel smart perform better than people who feel stupid.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Intuition is just the sum of all your experience. The way I see it, everything you’ve experienced, everything you know, you think you know and didn’t know you knew is there in your subconscious lying dormant, as it were. As a rule you don’t notice the sleeping creature, it’s just there, snoring and absorbing new things, right. But now and then it blinks, stretches and tells you, hey, I’ve seen this picture before. And tells you where in the picture things belong.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“The truth is that no one lives off the truth and that's why no one cares about the truth. The truth we make for ourselves is just the sum of what is in someone's interest, balanced by the power they hold.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“A sudden, uncontrollable fury rose in him, and he cast around for something to smash. He snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and was about to launch it at the wall, but changed his mind at the last moment.

Lifelong training in self-control, he thought, opening the bottle and putting it to his mouth.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Perhaps it's just that people, wherever they live on the globe, somehow share the same visions or fantasies. It's in our nature, wired into the hard drive, so to speak. Despite all the differences, sooner or later, we still come up with the same answers. - Harry Hole”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Rightly or wrongly, he used the level of chaos in his flat, as a thermometer for the state of his life.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“People change. The person you long for may no longer exist. Bloody hell, we all change, don’t we. Once something has”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“I suppose you think it strange that people can walk around smiling on a day like today...I suppose you take it as a personal affront that the sun is playing on the leaves at a time when you'd rather see the world collapse in misery and weep tears. Well, Harry, my friend, what can I say to you? Things aren't like that.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Sometimes I think I’ve got something, only in the next minute to be thrown into confusion once again. I don’t like being confused; I have no tolerance for it. That’s why I wish either I didn’t have this ability to capture details, or I had a greater ability to assemble them into a picture that made some sense.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“The brain works best between half past six and eleven. After that it’s mush,”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking.” “And afterward?” “I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don’t know why in fact, it was like a big cleanup. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: ‘Hi, we can’t meet anymore. It was nice knowing”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Die Wahrheit ist doch, dass niemand von der Wahrheit lebt und die Wahrheit deshalb niemanden interessiert. Die Wahrheit, die wir uns erschaffen, ist doch nur die Summe von all dem, was den Menschen zum eigenen Vorteil dient, und noch dazu abhängig davon, welche Macht sie innehaben.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“I think people feel a kind of need for punishment when they can no longer accept their own actions.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Perhaps it’s just that people, wherever they live on the globe, somehow share the same visions or fantasies. It’s in our nature, wired into the hard drive, so to speak. Despite all the differences, sooner or later, we still come up with the same answers.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Nevertheless they come up with their own history of creation, the Dreaming. The first man was Ber-rook-boorn. He was made by Baiame, the uncreated, who was the beginning of everything, and who loved and took care of all living things. In other words, a good man, this Baiame. Friends called him the Great Fatherly Spirit. After Baiame established Ber-rook-boorn and his wife in a good place, he left his mark on a sacred tree—yarran—nearby, which was the home of a swarm of bees. “ ‘You can take food from anywhere you want, in the whole of this country that I have given you, but this is my tree,’ he warned the two people. ‘If you try to take food from there, much evil will befall you and those who come after you.’ Something like that. At any rate, one day Ber-rook-boorn’s wife was collecting wood and she came to the yarran tree. At first she was frightened at the sight of the holy tree towering above her, but there was so much wood lying around that she did not follow her first impulse—which was to run away as fast as her legs could carry her. Besides, Baiame had not said anything about wood. While she was gathering the wood around the tree she heard a low buzzing sound above her head, and she gazed up at the swarm of bees. She also saw the honey running down the trunk. She had only tasted honey once before, but here there was enough for several meals. The sun glistened on the sweet, shiny drops, and in the end Ber-rook-boorn’s wife could not resist the temptation and she climbed up the tree. “At that moment a cold wind came from above and a sinister figure with enormous black wings enveloped her. It was Narahdarn the bat, whom Baiame had entrusted with guarding the holy tree. The woman fell to the ground and ran back to her cave where she hid. But it was too late, she had released death into the world, symbolized by the bat Narahdarn, and all of the Ber-rook-boorn descendants would be exposed to its curse. The yarran tree cried bitter tears over the tragedy that had taken place. The tears ran down the trunk and thickened, and that is why you can find red rubber on the bark of the tree nowadays.” Andrew puffed happily on his cigar.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“We have forensic psychiatrists who try to draw a line between those who are sick and those who are criminal, and they bend and twist the truth to make it fit into their world of theoretical models.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“Kristin hatte ihre Wahl an einem grauen Montagmorgen getroffen. Sie war vielleicht aufgewacht, erschöpft von dem neuen Tag, der noch nicht einmal richtig angebrochen war, hatte aus dem Fenster gesehen und sich entschlossen, dass es nun genug sei. Welche Gedanken sie sich gemacht hatte, wusste Harry nicht. Die menschliche Seele war ein tiefer, dunkler Wald, und alle Entscheidungen trifft man allein.”
― Jo Nesbø Der Fledermausmann, Flaggermusmannen

“I’m just one of the many millions of lonely souls trying to live on the face of this earth. I’m trying to acquit myself without making too many mistakes. Now and then I may even be on top of things enough to try and do some good. That’s all.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“So what do you look for in a man?” She rested her chin on her hand and gazed into the air considering the question. “I don’t know. I think I know more about what I don’t like in a man than what I do.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“That's what's so paradoxical. First of all, they take our people's pride, and when it's gone they're scared to death of treading on it.”
― Jo Nesbø, Flaggermusmannen

“Ljudska dusa je mracna, nepregledna suma, a sve odluke se donose u samoci.”
― Ju Nesbe, Flaggermusmannen

“It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters. “The waiters here are like the planet Pluto,” Andrew said. “They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“We’re doomed to be do-gooders for the rest of our lives and doomed to fail. But, happily, truth is a relative business.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat

“the large building that is Sydney Aquarium. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and Ben, the night-watchman, had let them in. A casual question from Harry—why all the lights were off—had led to a detailed explanation from the old watchman. “Of course it saves electricity, but that’s not the most important reason—the most important reason is that we’re telling the fish it’s night. I think so, anyhow. Before, we used to turn off the lights with a standard switch, and you could hear the shock when all of a sudden everything went pitch black. A whoosh went through the whole aquarium as hundreds of fish dashed to hide or swam off in blind panic.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Bat