Tove Ditlevsen > Quotes

“Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“It bothers me a lot that I don’t seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people’s reactions. It’s as if I’m only moved by things that come to me indirectly. I can cry when I see a picture in the newspaper of an unfortunate family that’s been evicted, but when I see the same ordinary sight in reality, it doesn’t touch me. I’m moved by poetry and lyrical prose, now as always – but the things that are described leave me completely cold. I don’t think very much of reality.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Meanwhile I am only twenty years old, and the days descend on me un-noticeably like dust, each one just like the rest.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy

“On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can’t tell by looking at them that they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it. You suspect that they’ve used some secret shortcut and donned their adult form many years ahead of time. They did it one day when they were home alone and their childhood lay like three bands of iron around their heart, like Iron Hans in Grimms’ fairy tale, whose bands broke only when his master was freed. But if you don’t know such a shortcut, childhood must be endured and trudged through hour by hour, through an absolutely interminable number of years. Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will open again.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Med ingen kan man dele sine inderste tanker. Det vigtigste i verden er man alene med.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, De voksne

“Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart. It seems that everyone has their own and each is totally different. My brother’s childhood is very noisy, for example, while mine is quiet and furtive and watchful. No one likes it and no one has any use for it.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Even though no one else cares for my poems, I have to write them because it dulls the sorrow and longing in my heart.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“That’s the worst thing about grownups, I think – they can never admit that just once in their lives they’ve acted wrongly or irresponsibly. They’re so quick to judge others, but they never hold Judgement Day for themselves.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it’s too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It’s only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you’ve survived.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“And I want so badly to own my own time instead of always having to sell it.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency

“Hygge is a state of being you experience if you are at peace with yourself, your spouse, the tax authorities and your inner organs.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can't find any of them on my childhood street.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy

“There's a young girl in me who refuses to die.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Jeg vil gerne rette en særlig tak til Illums Bolighus, fordi de skabte så smagfuldt og fint gennemtænkt et hjem for en familie, der aldrig har eksisteret.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Jeg ville være enke, og jeg ville være digter

“I sink into a sweet melancholy and rhythmic waves of words stream through me again.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“I always think there is a mystical understanding between the moon and the street, like between two sisters who have grown old together and no longer need any language to communicate with each other.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy

“Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral. You have to get through it - it has no other meaning.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Youth

“Vil du afværge volden, må du elske dig selv så højt, at du ikke vil finde dig i den. (slutningen af ove Ditlevsens digt "Elsk dig selv")”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy

“Jeg har tit nok været bange for livet, men aldrig døden.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Tove Ditlevsen om sig selv

“Og til allersidst den helt nye, snigende bekymring for at livet skal glide forbi hende uden at hun får tag i det.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Time passed and my childhood grew thin and flat, paperlike. It was tired and threadbare, and in low moments it didn’t look like it would last until I was grown up.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Jeg har skrevet hele mit liv og nærer en romantisk drøm om at dø midt i en sætning.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“People with such a visible, flagrant childhood both inside and out are called children, and you can treat them any way you like because there’s nothing to fear from them. They have no weapons and no masks unless they are very cunning. I am that kind of cunning child, and my mask is stupidity, which I’m always careful not to let anyone tear away from me. I let my mouth fall open a little and make my eyes completely blank, as if they’re always just staring off into the blue. Whenever it starts singing inside me, I’m especially careful not to let my mask show any holes. None of the grownups can stand the song in my heart or the garlands of words in my soul. But they know about them because bits seep out of me through a secret channel I don’t recognize and therefore can’t stop up.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Bøgers skæbne er ligeså forunderlig som menneskers. Den er aldrig til at forudse.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Tove Ditlevsen om sig selv

“Hun gav sig omsider til at elske verden, men kun fordi den skulle udslettes sammen med hende.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Vilhelms værelse

“Hun ser skygger hvor solen skinner og mørke i den klare dag.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“The most important thing, thought Edith, is what happens to a person when they see mountains. The most important thing is probably always precisely the thing you can't have. That's where all the happiness is”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy