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

“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

“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

“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

“But if it were possible to see everyone who has retired to their beds in a great city at night, in London, New York or Tokyo, for example, if we imagined that the buildings were made of glass and that all the rooms were lit, the sight would be deeply unsettling. Everywhere there would be people lying motionless in their cocoons, in room after room for miles on end, and not just at street level, along roads and crossroads, but even up in the air, separated by plateaus, some of them twenty metres above ground, some fifty, some a hundred. We would be able to see millions of immobile people who have withdrawn from others in order to lie in a coma throughout the night. Sleep’s vertiginous link to primordial times, not just with human life as it first unfolded on the plains of Africa three hundred thousand years ago, but with life on earth in its very first form, rising out of the sea and coming ashore four hundred million years ago, would become apparent. And a bed would no longer be merely a piece of furniture acquired from a shop, but a boat that every human being has and which we board every evening to let ourselves be carried through the night.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“For darkness is the rule and light its exception, as death is the rule and life its exception. Light and life are anomalies, the dawn is their continual affirmation.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“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

“It’s good to be alone, for a few hours to be exempt from all the complicated bonds, all the conflicts, great and small, all the demands and expectations, wills and desires that build up between people, and which after only a short time become so densely intertwined that the room for reflection and for action are both restricted. If everything that stirs between people made a sound, it would be like a chorus, a great murmur of voices would rise from even the faintest glimmer in the eyes.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Om høsten

“Letters are nothing but dead signs, and books are their coffins.”
― 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