On the Calculation of Volume I Quotes

“It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The fog had lifted. Those strange days were past. I knew I couldn’t hold onto the morning’s hazy gray light for long, I knew that I had been keeping the past and the present out, that I had been like a human pilot light. Gone were the featureless mornings. Gone, my time at the bottom of the sea, gone and irretrievable. Gone, the fog which had been the greatest bliss but which—it seems to me now—requires one to be in a state of the utmost naivety, to dwell in the halls of folly, to surrender to the gentle grip of apathy.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Maybe we are a weather system—condensation and evaporation: we are together, we look at one another, we touch one another, we condense, we come together, we make love, we fall asleep, we wake and revert to our strange bond, a quiet weather system with no natural disasters.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“the knowledge that everything can change in an instant, that something which cannot happen and which we absolutely do not expect, is nonetheless a possibility. That time stands still. That gravity is suspended. That the logic of the world and the laws of nature break down. That we are forced to acknowledge that our expectations about the constancy of the world are on shaky ground. There are no guarantees and behind all that we ordinarily regard as certain lie improbable exceptions, sudden cracks and inconceivable breaches of the usual laws.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I have not found a way out of the eighteenth of November, but I have found roads and paths through the day, narrow passages and tunnels I can move along. I cannot get out, but I can find ways in.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Often, we would simply come to the conclusion that you cannot know everything, that you have to accept some displacement in life, that you have to expect inconsistencies, and that was what we encountered: patterns and inconsistencies, two worlds trying to merge.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“They had an air of peace about them, Marie and Philip, which reminded me of the time, five years ago, when I first met Thomas. The sudden feeling of sharing something inexplicable, a sense of wonder at the existence of the other - the one person who makes everything simple - a feeling of being calmed and thrown into turmoil at one and the same time.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I have exchanged my hope for a mood and a frying pan.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Our love has always been microscopic. It is something in the cells, some molecules, some compounds outside our control, which collide in the air around us, sound waves that form unique harmonies when we speak, it happens at the atomic level or even that of smaller particles.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“My morning started in the same way as before. I became aware of the room around me, a day unfolding; I could still hold onto the feeling of a gray, misty morning for a few notes of birdsong, four or five notes, later only three, maybe two, no more, then my moment splintered and I remembered everything, my thoughts were already scanning the room, they had drifted to the windowsill, out into the morning, to the birds in the tree, to houses and streets where, one after another, people were entering the eighteenth of November in a firmly established pattern, convinced that they were embarking on this day for the very first time.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The minute we deviate from simple, practical matters, the conversation lapses imperceptibly into a kind of audio link, a muted love mumble. Our communication, initially meaningful and coherent, turns into a series of fitful exchanges containing neither sentences nor information: little words and sounds meant -- I suppose -- to keep the link between us open, but which, instead, make all too clear how far apart we are.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Recalling the way I felt last night, that sense of change and hope, and then my dismay at the rude reversion to the same lopsided moon, I cannot help but feel that the world’s been pulling my leg. That not only was I mistaken, but that I had fallen for an April Fool’s prank. As if the moon had altered its appearance just long enough for me to imagine that there really was a difference, only then to act all innocent just hanging there in the sky, totally deadpan.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“It was one thing for me to have encountered a fracture in the normal progression of time,”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable,”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I need to study the sky. I want to get to know it. I want names and patterns.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“am living in a time that eats up the world.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“leave the day to gradually awaken”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I want the year to wake up. To come back”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“A fluctuating mood is rather like a dance”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Our love has always been microscopic. It is something in the cells”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“For a fleeting moment I could see this rift in time as a mere detail”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“door?”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“repetitions?”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“To be a door. To be touched. And slowly swing back into place and close on easy hinges.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“It seems so odd to me now”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I