Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"As all the thoughts and images of consciousness began to move in directions over which I had no control, and I seemed to be lying there watching them, like a kind of lazy sheepdog of the mind, I knew sleep was around the corner."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"Everything I saw, faces, bodies ambling through the cabin, stowing their baggage here, sitting down, stowing their baggage there, sitting down, was followed by a reflective shadow that could not desist from telling me that I was seeing this now while aware that I was seeing this, and so on ad ab...

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"I switched off the computer, slid it into my bag, rinsed the cup and placed it in the sink, pulled out the loose electrical cable, turned off the light, and donned hat and coat in the moonlight filtering through the cracks in the blinds, all the time picturing her in my mind's eye in the large f...

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"I saw him in my mind's eye, when we went skiing together once, in Hove, gliding in and out of the trees, and in every clearing we could see the sea, gray and heavy and vast, and smell it too, the aroma of salt and seaweed that seemed to lie pressed up against the aroma of snow and spruce, Dad te...

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"Soon the countryside began to merge into shapes I vaguely recognized, it became more and more familiar until what I saw through the window coalesced with the images I had in my mind's eye."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"Feelings are like water, they always adapt to their surroundings."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"But with the flame of alcohol burning in my brain I took no notice of the atmosphere that otherwise would have affected me, for although I wasn't outright happy, I was elated, exhilarated, motivated by the desire to continue this, which not even a direct reminder of Dad's death could shake, it w...

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"But I didn't want to linger, nor could I perhaps, for the sensation lasted only a few moments, then my brain sank its claws into it and I went back to the kitchen where everything was as I had left it, except for the color of the drinks, which were shiny and full of small, grayish bubbles now."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"'Unraveling' was our family euphemism for senility."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)