The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven Quotes

“if you never allow for the possibility that someone might care for you on your own merit, their way of demonstrating it will always feel unusual or inadequate”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“Poor conversation, or even its lack, murders the finer machinations of the mind,”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“Eberhard died. I do not wish to articulate the details, for a form of spiritual or emotional rift in time and space was created on that day, and no matter how many years pass, I can always stretch back and know that pain as though the hole in me were being torn anew, or the sorrow may reach through with its icy finger and fell me when I’m least prepared. It is a part of me. A shadow that accompanies my shadow. There is no healing.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“But in my experience it’s rarely the parting that is memorable, unless it’s a death. They are always hurried, awkward affairs. Never enough time to say what you wish you had said. You must trust that your feelings are known, and that you will be remembered as you were.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“Always discriminating in her affections, she clearly liked something about the Finnishman’s smell: fastidiously devoid of human odor, but a little metallic, like wind blown across corrugated tin.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“Fate is empty. Any Arctic explorer or common sailor can tell you this. So you must make the best choices you can, knowing they may lead you astray, but proceeding boldly lest your life become one long monotonous drift between death and your last interesting choice.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“I recently lost my partner." "Your business partner?" "No. My dog. But not just a dog." "Of course," he said instantly "Some dogs are not just dogs." To my astonishment he clapped his hand over mine and held it there. His face was red and contorted and tears spilled into his beard. I admire those who wear their emotions openly, for I have always concealed mine, and the years of scar tissue and isolation have only served to bury them deeper. "You know this pain," I said. " Oh yes. My beloved Czolgosz. Faithful through all weathers. Except very bad weather. Or any kind of precipitation at all. A light mist and he would become traitorous and seek shelter with whomever. Bu my shadow. A better, kinder shadow.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“So you must make the best choices you can, knowing they may lead you astray, but proceeding boldly lest your life become one long monotonous drift between death and your last interesting choice.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“From the time I'd been a precocious, skeptical child, the idea of simply winking out like a light, or a star, was more than enough to nearly paralyze me with existential misery. I knew I would cease to be, and yet I could not comfortably imagine a world without me in it. It's a form of narcissism, sure, but how do we live from one day to the next without convincing ourselves of our own fallacious importance?”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“A life is substantially more curious, and mundane, than the reports would have it. And in truth, though I am known—within the tiny dewdrop circles of the unlikely few who know of me—as a solitary, unmatched Arctic hunter, I am no such thing, and I was seldom alone.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“It is quite something to feel sure that you’re alone in the world, and then to recall that you are not.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“If you put nothing down,” she replied, “the people you love will only remember the skeleton of your experience. Your mind dies with you. If you must write for someone, write for Skuld. Write for me.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“The skill of moving silently through the landscape is like music,” he told her. “Almost you make me feel less a teacher and more a musician.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“allow me to say that if you never allow for the possibility that someone might care for you on your own merit, their way of demonstrating it will always feel unusual or inadequate.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“My integrity was something to which I had never given much consideration. It seemed a ridiculous concept.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“It was fortunate for me that the British class obsession insists upon a steward of some kind for every person of importance. There are many British who consider themselves to be persons of importance.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“Hmm,” I said. “No doubt he has a bright future sweating and straining in some hellish factory, hemorrhaging his meager wages so that he may survive until his early death.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“I have seen enough to know that nothing is likely but everything is possible. Marie”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“My own life was one of absented people, and yet I never could get used to it. On some level of perception, I always felt flayed.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“There was now a hard, clenched feeling in my stomach and in my legs. It is ridiculous to assume that the right path will present itself, and that you will never regret having chosen it.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“She was the type of person to whom people like giving gifts—she was game for life, and yet always a little underprepared—and she received them handsomely.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“At the time I had no interest in destiny. I knew I wasn’t on the earth to please anyone, let alone God. I was just restless. National pride, military service, ribald songs, the sound of grown men laughing, air exchanged between several people in a tight space—they are all among the variety of things I found repellent. I suppose I still do. But they are also cherished staples of Swedish society. In the rather trite throes of alienation and disaffection, I turned instead, as so many youths before me have, to books.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“I was in thrall to the loneliness. It hung over me like a malevolent moon, waxing, waning, but always pulling, the hard-hearted master of all tides.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“He was wholly apolitical, Tapio once told me, "as only the truly self-regarding can afford to be.”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

“He held forth about political theory and about Marxism, maintaining that while there was a place for zealots in every revolution-unshakeable belief could carry a marginalized person very far indeed-each ideology held its share of fundamental flaws. For a radical thinker to exist successfully in the world he'd helped to change, he had to embrace the bitter compromises”
― Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven