Autumn Quotes

“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“Only what slips through one's fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don't see it. Don't know that it's there. Then it is over, then you see it.

The yellow-red leaves lying wet and smooth on the flagstones between the houses. How the stone darkens when it rains, lightens as it dries.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“Only what slips through one's fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don't see it. Don't know that it's there. Then it is over, then you see it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“The parents give the child life, the child gives the parents hope. That is the transaction”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“That’s the experience I’ve gained from working in the garden: there’s no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against skin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“Though actually I think that being in one's twenties is in itself to be restricted. At that age one's vigour is great, and one looks ahead, keeps one's eyes fixed on things to come, and of the things found in one's surroundings the most important are always those that hold the most promise. At the same time, and this is the cruelty of it, this forward-looking gaze is constantly confronted with the limitations of one's character, constantly coming up against a sense of stagnation - hence the youthful fear of stagnating intellectually.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“The world is material. We are always in a certain place. Now I am here.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“For if there is one thing that characterizes nature, it is abundance, a wild opulence of leaves and grass, petals, and stems and branches, an unrestrained waste of clorophyil.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“For it isn't the pupils you are seeing then, not the irises nor the whites of the eyes. It is the soul, the archaic light of the soul the eyes are filled with, and to gaze into the eyes of the one you love when love is at its most powerful belongs among the highest joys.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Water and air, rain and clouds, they too have been here for ever, but they are such an integral part of life that their ancientness is never apparent in our thoughts or emotions, contrary to lightning and thunder, which only occur now and then, during brief intervals which we are at once familiar with and foreign to, just as we are at once familiar with and foreign to ourselves and the world we are a part of.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Time is distance, and when it is suspended, we are no longer in the world but a part of the world. That is what the music of Orpheus did to the women who in a kind of collective trance or ecstasy tore his head off and tossed it into the sea, where it drifted slowly away, still singing.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“Even though we are not attached to the earth with roots, but are able to walk about on top of it, yet we are inseparably bound to it, both in that its transformative and, as it were, moves us about with its force, and in that, when life ebbs away and the earth's force no longer sustains us, it draws us down towards itself in a gruesome final embrace, before we not only become like it, but become it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“It feels like I have started something new, something quite different, and that is this family. I think of it every day, that what matters is now, that the years we are living through now are when everything important happens. My previous life seems more and more distant. I am no longer preoccupied with my own childhood. Not interested in my student years, my twenties. All that seems far, far away. And I can imagine how it will be when what is happening now is over, when the children have moved out, the thought that these were the important years, this is when I was alive. Why didn’t I appreciate it while I had it? Because then, I sometimes think, I hadn’t had it yet. Only what slips through one’s fingers, only what is never expressed in words… exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don’t see it. Don’t know that it’s there. Then it is over, then you see it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“Letters are nothing but dead signs, and books are their coffins.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“Only what slips through one’s fingers, only what is never expressed in words, has no thoughts, exists completely. That is the price of proximity: you don’t see it. Don’t know that it’s there. Then it is over, then you see it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“I want to show you the world, as it is, all around us, all the time. Only by doing so will I myself be able to glimpse it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“This moment was not the beginning of anything, not even an insight, nor was it the conclusion of anything, and maybe that is what I was thinking as I stood digging holes in the ground a few days ago, that I was still in the middle of something and always would be.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“To someone who has lived for many years, the door is obvious. The house is obvious, the garden is obvious, the sky and the sea are obvious, even the moon, suspended in the night sky and shining brightly above the rooftops, is obvious. The world expresses its being, but we are not listening, and since we are no longer immersed in it, experiencing it as a part of ourselves, it is as if it escapes us.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“But the literature about life and living is more closely related to nothing and lifelessness, night and silence, than we imagine it to be. Letters are nothing but dead signs, and books are their coffins. Not a sound has issued from this text while you have been reading it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Time is distance, and when it is suspended, we are no longer in the world but a part of the world.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“Without language the world would become overgrown: every single word is like a little clearing.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Autumn

“For if there is one thing that characterizes nature, it is abundance, a wild opulence of leaves and grass, petals, and stems and branches, an unrestrained waste of chlorophyll.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“... artık biliyorum ki önemli olan hiçbir zaman dünyanın kendisi değil, bizim onunla ilişki kurma biçimimiz. Gizliliğin karşısında açıklık, çalışmanın karşısında özgürlük duruyor.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Fakat gerçeklik kavramları yükselip alçalır, alevlenip sönerken gerçekliğin kendisi yılmaz, durumu değişmez: Güneş doğudan doğar, karanlık usulca çekilir ve hava kuş sesleriyle dolarken sırtlarına güneş ışıkları binen bulutlar griden önce pembeye sonra parlak beyaza döner, daha birkaç dakika önce grimsi siyah olan gökyüzü artık mavidir ve ilk ışıklar bahçeyi aydınlatır. Gündüz olur. İnsanlar günlük işlerine girişir, dünya döndükçe gölgeler kısaldıkça kısalır ve uzadıkça uzar. Dışarıda elma ağacının altında yemek yerken hava çocuk sesleriyle, tabak çanak tıkırtısıyla, hafif esintide yaprak hışırtısıyla dolar ve konukevinin çatısının hemen üzerinde alçalırken alevli sarı rengini usulca yanan bir turuncuya terk eden güneşi kimse fark etmez.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Özlemin kendisinden başka özleyecek bir şey kalmadı artık.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Nostalji, eskiye duyulan özlem, gölge hastalık. Bunun karşıtı denebilecek doğal duygu da henüz var olmayana, yani umut ve coşku dolu, imkansızlık içermeyen, yitip gidenle değil hala daha kazanılabilecek olanla ilişkilendirilen gelecek özlemi. Belki de kapıldığım nostaljinin çok güçlü olmasının nedeni ütopyaların çağımızdan silinmesidir, özlem artık ileri değil yalnızca geri yönelebildiği için tüm güçlerin orada toplanmasıdır.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Şimşekten daha güzel bulduğum pek az şey vardır ve gök gürültüsü yaşama duygusunu her zaman güçlendirir. Su ve hava, yağmur ve bulutlar ezelden beri varlar fakat yaşamın içine öyle işlemişler ki kadim doğaları ne düşüncelerimizde ne duygularımızda kendini gösterir, halbuki yalnızca arada sırada ortaya çıkan şimşek ve gök gürültüsü bunun tam tersidir, bu kısa aralıklar bizim için hem tanıdık hem yabancıdır, tıpkı kendimizin ve parçası olduğumuz bu dünyanın bize hem tanıdık hem de yabancı gelmesi gibi.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Çünkü savaşın öteki yüzü budur: Yaşamı yalınlaştırır, elle tutulur amaçlar belirler ve her bir bireye kesin yöntemlerin uygulanmasıyla üstesinden gelinebilcek belli görevler yükler. Savaş insanda atıl durumda bulunan akla aykırı güçleri uyandırmakla yetinmez, akla yatkın olanları da uyandırır. Savaş hem yalın bir ok hem de okun ortadan kaldırdığı karmaşık yaşamdır.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Tan yeri her zaman bir şeyin başlangıcıdır, onun karşıtı olan alaca karanlık ise her zaman bir şeyin sonudur ve hemen tüm kültürlerde, karanlığın ölümü ve kötülüğü, aydınlığın ise yaşamı ve iyiliği simgelediğini düşünürdek gece ile gündüz arasindaki bu iki geçiş alanı, kendimizi içindr bulduğumuz büyük varoluşsal dramın biçimlenişi olur, öte yandan bahçede durmuş doğuda büyüyen aydınlığa bakarken bu pek aklımdan geçmese de izlemek bana kendimi böylesine yi hissettirdiğine göre her nasılsa içimde bir yerlerde yankılanıyor olmalı. Çünkü karanlık kuraldır ve aydınlık bu kuralın dışında kalır, tıpkı yaşamın ölüm kuralının dışında kalması gibi. Aydınlık ile yaşam anomalidir ve tan yeri onların daimi teyididir.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn