Min kamp 3 Quotes

“I am alive, I have my own children and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn’t be afraid of their father.

They aren’t. I know that.

When I enter a room, they don’t cringe, they don't look down at the floor, they don’t dart off as soon as they glimpse an opportunity, no, if they look at me, it is not a look of indifference, and if there is anyone I am happy to be ignored by it is them. If there is anyone I am happy to be taken for granted by, it is them. And should they have completely forgotten I was there when they turn forty themselves, I will thank them and take a bow and accept the bouquets.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Now they’re twenty-four and their real lives lie before them. Jobs of their own, a house of their own, children of their own. There are the two of them, and the future they are moving into is theirs, too.

Or is it?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Of course, I don’t remember any of this time. It is absolutely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed, indeed so impossible that it seems wrong to use the word “me” to describe what is lying on the changing table, for example, with unusually red skin, arms and legs spread, and a face distorted into a scream, the cause of which no one can remember, or on a sheepskin rug on the floor, wearing white pajamas, still red-faced, with large, dark eyes squinting slightly. Is this creature the same person as the one sitting here in Malmö writing? And will the forty-year-old creature who is sitting in Malmö writing this one overcast September day in a room filled with the drone of the traffic outside and the autumn wind howling through the old-fashioned ventilation system be the same as the gray, hunched geriatric who in forty years from now might be sitting dribbling and trembling in an old people’s home somewhere in the Swedish woods? Not to mention the corpse that at some point will be laid out on a bench in a morgue? Still known as Karl Ove. And isn’t it actually unbelievable that one simple name encompasses all of this? The fetus in the belly, the infant on the changing table, the forty-year-old in front of the computer, the old man in the chair, the corpse on the bench? Wouldn’t it be more natural to operate with several names since their identities and self-perceptions are so very different? Such that the fetus might be called Jens Ove, for example, and the infant Nils Ove, and the five- to ten-year-old Per Ove, the ten- to twelve-year-old Geir Ove, the twelve- to seventeen-year-old Kurt Ove, the seventeen- to twenty-three-year-old John Ove, the twenty-three- to thirty-two-year-old Tor Ove, the thirty-two- to forty-six-year-old Karl Ove — and so on and so forth? Then the first name would represent the distinctiveness of the age range, the middle name would represent continuity, and the last, family affiliation.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Suddenly I realized this was a heart I was watching. How incredibly sad. Not because the heart was beating and couldn’t escape, it wasn’t that. The point was that the heart should not be seen, it should be allowed to beat in secret, hidden from our sight, it was obvious, you understood that when you saw it, a little animal without eyes, it should pound and throb inside your chest unseen.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“Memory is not a reliable quantity in life. And it isn’t for the simple reason that memory doesn’t prioritize the truth. It is never the demand for truth that determines whether memory recalls an action accurately or not. It is self-interest that does. Memory is pragmatic, it is sly and artful, but not in any hostile or malicious way; on the contrary, it does everything it can to keep its host satisfied. Something pushes a memory into the great void of oblivion, something distorts it beyond recognition, something misunderstands it totally, something, and this something is as good as nothing, recalls it with sharpness, clarity, and accuracy. That which is remembered accurately is never given to you to determine.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“And isn’t it actually unbelievable that one simple name encompasses all of this? The fetus in the belly, the infant on the changing table, the forty-year-old in front of the computer, the old man in the chair, the corpse on the bench?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination as your imagination limits the world.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“My parents used to play music when we had gone to bed, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. Often it was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep. Every now and again he played records when he was alone in his study. Steinar had told me once that he had brought a Pink Floyd LP into the classroom and played it. He had said this with awe in his voice.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“It is the era that we take photos of, not the people in it, they can’t be captured.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“Who I am to them I have no idea, probably a vague memory of someone they once knew in their childhood years, for they have done so much to one another in their lives since then, so much has happened and with such impact that the small incidents that took place in their childhoods have no more gravity than the dust stirred up by a passing car, or the seeds of a withering dandelion dispersed by the breath from a small mouth. And oh, wasn't the latter a fine image, of how event after event is dispersed in the air above the little meadow of one's own history, only to fall between the blades of grass and vanish?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“[I felt] a huge sense of relief . . . that the houses and the places that disappeared behind me were also disappearing out of my life, for good. Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape, and every single person living in it, would forever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Okuduklarıma kendimi kaptırdığımda özellikle ürkütücüydü, kitaptan başımı kaldırıp doğrulunca hiçbir yerle bağlantım yokmuş gibi geliyordu bana. Yapayalnız olduğum duygusuna kapılıyordum, dışarıda bir duvarı andıran karanlığın ortasında büsbütün bir başımaydım.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“When I arrived Dad was at home. He was in the laundry room at the bottom of the house. He turned to me, anger in every movement.

“I picked you some flowers,” I said.

He reached out with his hand, took them, and threw them in the large sink.

“Little girls pick flowers,” he said.

He was right. And he was probably ashamed of me. Once some of his colleagues had come home and they had seen me on the stairs, with my blond hair quite long, because it was winter, and I was wearing red long johns.

“What a nice girl you’ve got,” one of them said.

“It’s a boy,” Dad answered. He had smiled, but I knew him well enough to know the comment had not gladdened his heart.

There was my interest in clothes, my crying if I didn’t get the shoes I wanted, my crying if it was too cold when we were in the boat on the sea, indeed my crying if he raised his voice in situations when it would have been absolutely normal to raise your voice. Was it so strange he thought: what kind of son have I got here?

I was a mama’s boy, he was constantly telling me. I was, too. I longed for her. And no one was happier than I when she moved back for good at the end of the month.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“She always brought something when she came on Fridays, and this time it had been a book. A Wizard of Earthsea, written by someone called Ursula K. Le Guin, and already after the first few pages I knew that this was an absolutely fantastic book.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“The shadows that descended over the ground outside were so long and distorted that they no longer bore any resemblance to the forms that created them. As though they had sprung forth in their own right, as though there existed a parallel reality of darkness, with dark-fences, dark-trees, dark-houses, populated by dark-people, somehow stranded here in the light, where they seemed so misshapen and helpless, as far from their element as a reef with seaweed and shells and crabs is from the receding water, one might imagine. Oh, isn’t that why shadows get longer and longer in the evening? They are reaching out for the night, this tidal water of darkness that washes over the earth to fulfill for a few hours the shadows’ innermost yearnings.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“Wouldn’t it be more natural to operate with several names since their identities and self-perceptions are so very different? Such that the fetus might be called Jens Ove, for example, and the infant Nils Ove, and the five- to ten-year-old Per Ove, the ten- to twelve-year-old Geir Ove, the twelve- to seventeen-year-old Kurt Ove, the seventeen- to twenty-three-year-old John Ove, the twenty-three- to thirty-two-year-old Tor Ove, the thirty-two- to forty-six-year-old Karl Ove – and so on and so forth? Then the first name would represent the distinctiveness of the age range, the middle name would represent continuity, and the last, family affiliation.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3

“Bylo podivuhodné, jak všechny velké stromy oplývaly svou vlastní jedinečnou osobností, vyjadřovanou skrze naprosto unikátní postavení, v němž rostly, a auru, již dohromady vytvářely kmeny a kořeny, kůra a větve, světlo a stín. Bylo to, jako by promlouvaly. Ne nějakými hlasy samozřejmě, nýbrž tím, čím jsou, což se tak nějak šířilo k těm, kdo se na ně dívali. A promlouvaly jen o tom, že jsou, o ničem jiném. Kudykoliv jsem chodil po osadě či lesích okolo, slýchal jsem tyto hlasy, nebo spíš vnímal otisk těchto nesmírně pomalu rostoucích bytostí.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn't let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.
Oh, how good that was!”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“

Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn't let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.

Oh, how good that was!

”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“The article said that Kevin Keegan was an extrovert while Kenny Dalglish was an introvert.

Just seeing the word introvert threw me into despair.

Was I an introvert?

Wasn’t I?

Didn’t I cry more than I laughed? Didn’t I spend all my time reading in my room?

That was introverted behavior, wasn’t it?

Introvert, introvert, I didn’t want to be an introvert.

That was the last thing I wanted to be, there could be nothing worse.

But I was an introvert, and the insight grew like a kind of mental cancer within me.

Kenny Dalglish kept himself to himself.

Oh, so did I! But I didn’t want that. I wanted to be an extrovert! An extrovert!”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“I had never been allowed to invite friends on my birthday, and nor was I on this one. I was sullen and surly, I ate the cake without a word...”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Yngve came in and said that John Bonham, the drummer in Led Zeppelin, was on one of the songs.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“When the second song came, Norwegian Wood, I took my eyes off the book and gazed at the ceiling as the mood of the music in some incomprehensible way got into me and raised me to where it was. It was a fantastic feeling. Not only because it was beautiful, there was something else present that had nothing to do with the room I lay in or the world I was surrounded by.

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me?
She showed me her room, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?

Fantastic, fantastic.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Now let’s see. The class reps on the council this year are therefore Eivind and Marianne!”

I looked down at the desk in front of me.

One vote.

How was that possible?

And, to cap it off, the one vote was my own.

But I was the best student in the class! At least in Norwegian! And natural and social sciences! And in math I was the second best, or perhaps the third. But, altogether, who could be better than me?

OK, Eivind won. But one vote? How was that possible?

Hadn’t anyone voted for me?

There had to be a mistake somewhere.

No one?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“The sole really unpredictable factor in this life, from autumn to winter, spring to summer, from one school year to the next, was Dad. I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to recreate the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close.

His footsteps on the stairs — was he coming to see me?

The wild glare in his eyes. The tightness around his mouth. The lips that parted involuntarily. And then his voice.

Sitting here now, hearing it in my inner ear, I almost start crying.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“What would the days be like now?

It was Mom who bound us all together, it was Mom who was at the center of Yngve’s and my life, we knew that, Dad knew that, but perhaps she didn’t. How else could she leave us like this?

Knives and forks clinking on plates, elbows moving, heads held stiff, straight backs. No one saying a word. That is us three, a father and two sons, sitting and eating. Around us, on all sides, it is the seventies.

The silence grows. And we notice it, all three of us, the silence is not the kind that can ease, it is the kind that lasts a lifetime. Well, of course, you can say something inside it, you can talk, but the silence doesn’t stop for that reason.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“I scored a goal!” I said.

“Oh, great!” Mom said.

When we returned home and I was sitting at the kitchen table to eat supper, I said it again.

“I scored today!”

“Was it a match?” Yngve said.

“No,” I said. “We haven’t had any matches yet. It was training.”

“Then it means nothing,” he said.

A couple of tears detached themselves and rolled down my cheeks. Dad looked at me with that stern, annoyed expression of his.

“For Christ’s sake, you can’t cry about THAT!” he said. “There must be SOMETHING you can take without blubbering!”

By then the tears were in full flow.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“The darkness that thinking about her could generate inside me was therefore of a different order from the other darkness that sometimes came over me, which had a depressing and burdening effect on everything, and which Geir also felt, it transpired. One evening we sat in his room and he asked me what was up with me.

“Nothing much,” I said.

“You’re so quiet!” he said.

“Oh, that,” I said. “I’m just fed up.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. There’s no particular reason. I’m just fed up.”

“I feel like that sometimes, too,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just fed up for no particular reason?”

“Yes. I’m like that, too.”

“I didn’t realize,” I said. “Didn’t realize others could feel like that, too.”

“That’s what we’ll have to call it,” he said. “Like that. We can say it when we’re in that mood. ‘I’m like that today,’ we can say, and then the other person will understand right away.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“The next day we sat in Geir’s bedroom and wrote a love letter to Anne Lisbet. His parents’ house was identical to ours, it had exactly the same rooms, facing in exactly the same directions, but it was still unendingly different, because for them functionality reigned supreme, chairs were above all else comfortable to sit in, not attractive to look at, and the vacuumed, almost mathematically scrupulous, cleanliness that characterized our rooms was utterly absent in their house, with tables and the floor strewn with whatever they happened to be using at that moment. In a way, their lifestyle was integrated into the house. I suppose ours was, too, it was just that ours was different. For Geir’s father, sole control of his tools was unthinkable, quite the contrary, part of the point of how he brought up Geir and Gro was to involve them as much as possible in whatever he was doing. They had a workbench downstairs, where they hammered and planed, glued and sanded, and if we felt like making a soap-box cart, for example, or a go-kart, as we called it, he was our first port of call. Their garden wasn’t beautiful or symmetrical as ours had become after all the hours Dad had spent in it, but more haphazard, created on the functionality principle whereby the compost heap occupied a large space, despite its unappealing exterior, and likewise the stark, rather weed-like potato plants growing in a big patch behind the house where we had a ruler-straight lawn and curved beds of rhododendrons.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Gjerstadsholmen.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 3