So Much Longing in So Little Space Quotes

“It is often windy here, the great sails of wind that build up over the ocean meet no obstacles and come rushing in over the land, but today it was perfectly still, the light stood motionless in the air, and all the muted colours unfolded calmly in it.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder

“Art is as much about searching as it is about creating.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder

“so much of what we see lies in the name; that is an apple tree, that is an elm, that is a cherry tree, that is a spruce. If we look at it for longer, we might get beneath the name and see it as a unique, singular tree and not merely as a representative of the category it belongs to. And eventually we may even be able to see what it 'is', its presence in the world. But by then we will have come to know it so well that it will seem familiar to us, which in turn creates a distance, for that's how it is with the familiar, isn't it, friends we've known for years - we no longer see them, we just note their presence, allowing it to fill the category we have created for them.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder

“In themselves pictures are beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond thought, they invoke the presence of the world on the world's terms, which also means that everything that has been thought and written in this book stops being valid the moment your gaze meets the canvas.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder

“Everything else has changed and disappeared with time, but not the painting. When we stand in front of it, we realise its significance, we bring it to life, we draw it into our own time and our own reality. Art works with the living, it attempts to grasp life in time, as it is in precisely this moment, and when it succeeds, life in time becomes timeless.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder

“This ability, to both step aside for the motif, make room for it, see it and sense it, which demands a great openness to the world, and at the same time be able to bring out one’s own vision in a painting, is perhaps the decisive quality for every artist. Therein lay van Gogh’s genius, in his total self-effacement when he painted, entirely faithful to what he saw, which paradoxically became filled with himself.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch

“The self is a work in progress, it understands itself through its memories but lives its life between them, in bits and pieces, in the present and in the past, in thoughts and emotions.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Så mye lengsel på så liten flate. En bok om Edvard Munchs bilder