Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Per Petterson, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Per Petterson quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 54 Per Petterson quotes for you to read and share.

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I grew up in the city. Both my mother and father were factory workers, and I loved the life in the 'metro.' Everybody saw me as a very urban guy. And I was. -- Per Petterson
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I'm sorry I laughed ... I know it isn't funny for you. It was incredibly stupid of me to laugh. Does it hurt a lot anywhere?
'Not really,' I said.
'Only a bit in your soul?'
'Maybe a bit.'
'Let it sink,' he said. 'Just leave it. You can't use it for anything. -- Per Petterson
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1989 was such a very, very important year in Europe. The wall fell, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and so many things happened - in 15 minutes, the world changed. -- Per Petterson
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There was always a woman with TB in Remarque's books. Frankly I was a little fed up with it. -- Per Petterson
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To say that a family is happy I think is to diminish it, taking out what is interesting. Growing up, I don't think my family was any happier or unhappier than anyone else's. My mother and father should have been divorced or never even married. On the other hand, I remember many moments of happiness. -- Per Petterson
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She turns her head and looks at me, and there is a trustfuless in that look I probably do not deserve. But maybe that is not the point, to deserve it or not, perhaps it just exists, that trust, disconnected from who you are and what you have done, and is not to be measured in any way. -- Per Petterson
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Time is important to me now, I tell myself.Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but only be time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by. so that it grows distict to me and does not vanish when I am not looking. -- Per Petterson
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The young swans as big as their parents now, but still grey and it looks peculiar, like two different species swimming in a line, alike in all their movements, and no doubt they think they are the same, while everyone can see that they are not. -- Per Petterson
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And we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt. -- Per Petterson
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But that's life. That's what you learn from; when things happen. Especially at your age. You just have to take it in and remember to think afterwards and not forget and never grow bitter. -- Per Petterson
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Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing. -- Per Petterson
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I do consider myself a Norwegian writer, or a Scandinavian writer, as my family tree reaches into both Denmark and Sweden. I don't think about it, of course, when I am writing. -- Per Petterson
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I'm a family-based person, even though we didn't exactly have a very happy family. I was never in any doubt that this was a centre of writing. -- Per Petterson
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When a translation is very good, it is fascinating to see how the book changes and yet stays the same. I think 'Out Stealing Horses' sounds more American for Americans than it does in Norway, and still, it is all there, everything that I wrote. It's amazing. -- Per Petterson
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When you are a sentence-based writer, they have to be good. They have to be really on the spot. Because when you don't have a plot, really, what shall you rely on? Just language. And sometimes I am so afraid of writing the wrong thing, I just sit and wait for the right thing to come. -- Per Petterson
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That if I let myself go, did not always slow me down by thinking so much beforehand I could achieve many things I would never have dreamt possible!! -- Per Petterson
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To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape. -- Per Petterson
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On that island was a lighthouse I had seen every single summer of my entire life and my mother, too, had seen it her entire life, and I wondered how it might affect your way of thinking, if you always had a lighthouse in the corner of your eye. -- Per Petterson
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If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer. -- Per Petterson
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It was as if gravity was suspended. It was like dancing, I thought, although I had never danced in my whole life. We were never to walk like that again. -- Per Petterson
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I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence. -- Per Petterson
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Then she turns to me. 'Tell me. How are you really?' she says, as if there were two versions of my life, and now she is not on the verge of tears at all, but sharp-voiced as an interrogator. -- Per Petterson
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I should have said the right thing just then, but I did not know what that would be, if such a thing existed, I did not think so, and those who said it did, knew nothing. So I said the first thing that came into my head.
"Are you afraid?". I said. -- Per Petterson
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You're probably right,' I said, but to be honest, I had forgotten to be a Communist that night. -- Per Petterson
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'In the Wake' was a very bleak book. This relationship was not too good, the father and son. This time around, I wanted a father and a son who really loved each other, which would be visible on the first page and would still be there on the last page. -- Per Petterson
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I don't know if nature is a direct literary influence on my writing, but it is certainly important to me. I take great joy in writing about it. It is something I have taken with me from my childhood; the body exposed to the threat of the physical world and at the same time being at home in it. -- Per Petterson
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I worked in a bookstore in Oslo, importing the English-language books. -- Per Petterson
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But life had shifted its weight from one point to another, from one leg to the other, like a silent giant in the vast shadows against the ridge, and I did not feel like the person I had been when this day began, and I did not even know if that was something to be sorry for. -- Per Petterson
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Living here where I live, on a farm way out in the countryside, in the woods, in fact, I have plenty of time to be alone, and I like it. I always have. I like my own company. And I am not the only one who feels this way; a high percentage of the Norwegian population feel as I do. -- Per Petterson
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She looks at me, this is not what she had expected, she sniffs at the food and only slowly starts to eat, swallows each mouthful with demonstrative gloom, and then turns to look at me again, a long look, with those eyes, sighs and goes on, as if she were emptying the poisoned chalice. Spoiled dog. -- Per Petterson
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There are some things with alcohol you must never do. You must never drink alone, never drink on Sundays, never drink before seven o'clock and if you do, it has to be on a Saturday. -- Per Petterson
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A lot can change because you are embarrassed by something. -- Per Petterson
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When my mother talked about her brother, there was this light in her eyes. I thought, 'This is the basis of a novel.' -- Per Petterson
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Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now. -- Per Petterson
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I see the shape of the wind on the water ... -- Per Petterson
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To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere. -- Per Petterson
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There is nothing I need from the shop, and this is not the day for social profligacy. -- Per Petterson
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If I just concentrate I can walk into memory's store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it ... -- Per Petterson
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You decide for yourself when it will hurt. -- Per Petterson
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Light in every lamp, light in every mind. -- Per Petterson
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I remember a lot of dreams. Sometimes they are hard to distinguish from what has really happened. That is not so terrible. It is the same with books. -- Per Petterson
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A dead dog is more quiet than a house on the steppes, a chair in a empty room. -- Per Petterson
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I decided if I couldn't be a writer, my life would be miserable. I had this imaginary room of references to all the books I had read, a kind of bubble, in which I lived. -- Per Petterson
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In a household tragedy, you are very much aware of being alone. It is something that is possible to grasp, and that is why it hurts so much. Because you are alone. I know a little about this. -- Per Petterson
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Oh, well, we did have a good day out together, you and I, that doesn't happen every day, does it? -- Per Petterson
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Making sentences is what I do. I mean, the story will come as I write. -- Per Petterson
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But what I found out that summer ... was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not. -- Per Petterson
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I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me. -- Per Petterson
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I rely heavily on rhythm when I write. You should tap your foot when you read it, all the way through. -- Per Petterson
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I do not think of literature as something confessional or therapeutic. I make sentences in order to be precise about experiences and things. I am urged by many things and no things in particular. -- Per Petterson
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The important discovery I made very early is that my novels had to be written without any given plan or outline. I can't do it in any other way. But then they are dependent on the sentences, my intuition, and, as I have experienced many times, the subconscious. -- Per Petterson
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I was perfectly calm, I was the anchor of the world. -- Per Petterson
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You don't remember what you never fail to do, that is common knowledge, -- Per Petterson
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I write about families. That is who we are. -- Per Petterson