Stig Dagerman > Quotes

“Journalism is the art of coming too late as early as possible. I’ll never master that.”
― Stig Dagerman

“I received in inheritance neither god nor a given spot on earth from where I can draw the attention of a god: no one either legated me the well disguised fury of the skeptic, the Sioux guiles of the rationalist or the burning innocence of the atheist. So I dare not throw the stone neither at the one who believes in things which inspire me only doubt, nor at the one who cultivates his doubt as if it was not, just as well, surrounded with darkness. This stone would hit me myself because I am well certain about one thing: the need of consolation that dwells within the human being is impossible to satisfy.”
― Stig Dagerman, Notre besoin de consolation est impossible à rassasier

“But then comes a time when forgetting isn't possible. And I do mean a particular time when no amount of dreaming, not then and maybe not ever, can change how naked and unimportant we become in our own eyes.”
― Stig Dagerman

“One day a year let’s all pretend
that death is tucked up, fast asleep.
That no lives meet a tragic end,
no dreams are shattered on the cheap.

The world’s at peace, there are no wars,
we hug our friend, our former foe.
No beggars die outside locked doors,
all cells are empty on death row.

Nobody’s stabbed, nobody’s shot,
no car runs over someone’s friend.
This can’t be true! – Well, maybe not.
All I’m saying is: let’s pretend.”
― Stig Dagerman, Dagsedlar (Samlade skrifter / Stig Dagerman)

“When she enters the room she immediately shuts the window and draws the shade with a quick, hard pull. Then she throws herself down on the bed, and the sobbing starts all over again. It's as if she can't sob when she's not in a lying position - either that or she has to start sobbing the moment she lies down.”
― Stig Dagerman, Sleet: Selected Stories

“Jag tycker inte om trohet därför att den är vacker, men därför att den är nödvändig. Den som bedrar en människa dödar henne långsamt.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“In the autumn of 1946 the leaves were falling in Germany for the third time since Churchill’s famous speech about the falling of leaves. It was a gloomy season with rain, cold – and hunger, especially in the Ruhr and generally throughout the rest of the old Third Reich. All autumn, trains arrived in the Western Zones with refugees from the Eastern Zone. Ragged, starving and unwelcome, they crowded in dark, stinking station-bunkers or in the giant windowless bunkers that look like rectangular gasometers, looming like huge monuments to defeat in Germany’s collapsed cities. The silence and passive submission of these apparently insignificant people gave a sense of dark bitterness to that German autumn. They became significant just because they came and never stopped coming and because they came in such numbers. They became significant perhaps not in spite of their silence but because of it, for nothing can be expressed with such a charge of menace as that which is not expressed.”
― Stig Dagerman, German Autumn

“Real dread is knowing that your thoughts lie to you, even when you think you are being honest”
― Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame

“People demanded of those who were suffering their way through the German autumn that they should learn from their misfortune. No one thought that hunger is a very bad teacher”
― Stig Dagerman , German Autumn

“Det som binder henne och det som också binder honom är ögonblickets skönhet. Ingenting är ju så vackert som de första ensamma minuterna med någon som skulle kunna älska en och någon man själv skulle kunna älska. Det finns ingenting så tyst som de minuterna, ingenting så mättat med ljuv förväntan. För de få minuterna är det som man älskar, inte för de många som följer. Aldrig mer, vet de, skall något så vackert hända dem. Gladare skall de kanske bli, hetare också och oändligt nöjda med sina egna kroppar och varandras. Men aldrig mer skall det bli så vackert.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“I have no philosophy in which I can move like a fish in water or a bird on the wing. All I have is an endless struggle, every second of my life, between false consolations that only add to my feeling of powerlessness and deepen my despair, and true consolations that bring me momentary freedom. I should probably say the true consolation, because for me only one exists: the one that allows me to know myself as a free human being, within my own boundaries, untouchable.”
― Stig Dagerman, Notre besoin de consolation est impossible à rassasier

“Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“Med människor i en liten båt sker något sällsamt. Vad de upplever är att de känner sig ensamma. Vad de känner är att de är ensamma tillsammans, tillsammans med de andra i båten. Därför uppstår mellan människor i små båtar en tillfällig tillgivenhet. Man har ju bara varandra och djupa vatten är skrämmande och små båtar är mycket bräckliga. Var och en blir den andres livboj. Är inte du rädd så inte är jag det.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“But where is the root of suffering? He begins talking about the happiness of suffering, about the beauty of suffering. Suffering is not dirty, suffering is not pitiable. No, suffering is great because suffering makes people great...It is impossible to convince him that suffering is something unworthy.”
― Stig Dagerman , German Autumn

“After all, there is little we can do when we're sitting at the same table and drinking tea with someone we hate. Judas himself could be sitting at our table, and we wouldn't ask him about Jesus. We would talk to him about the weather.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame

“Med näsduken pressad mot ett öga i taget gråter han av tomhet, gråter och gråter, ty tomheten har fler tårar än någonting annat.”
― Stig Dagerman

“Wise, because wisdom is to be in love with life, whereas foolishness is to be ashamed of love”
― Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame

“I think that the more theoretical knowledge you obtain, the more multifarious and kaleidoscopic your view becomes of the reality that lurks behind concepts. This reality is so insatiably rich that a fixed determinant of a concept's position must simply be an absurdity.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame

“For so uncaring is life constructed that a minute before a happy man kills a child he is still happy and a minute before a woman screams with fear she can close her eyes and dream of the sea and the last minute of a child's life this child's parents can sit in the kitchen and wait for sugar and speak of their child's white teeth and about a rowing boat and the child itself can close a gate and start walking across a road with a few lumps of sugar wrapped in white paper in its right hand and this entire last minute nothing see except a long, shiny river and a broad boat with silent oars.”
― Stig Dagerman, Att döda ett barn

“Och ren måste den som man älskar vara. Annars kan man inte älska henne. Men att älska en människa är också att göra henne ren.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“But so uncaring is life against the man who has killed a child that everything after is too late.”
― Stig Dagerman, Att döda ett barn

“esse querido plano interior; o segredo da felicidade é não termos escrúpulos para connosco e termos o máximo de atenções para com todos os outros; de resto, o próprio tempo disse já adeus a todos os piratas da alma”
― Stig Dagerman, Island of the Doomed

“Behöver man vara rädd för den man har älskat? För jag älskade henne. Jag älskade henne verkligen. Det är sant. Men jag är ju inte rädd. Jag bara saknar henne. Först gjorde jag det inte. Ty inte saknar man det som inte finns. Nu vet jag att hon finns. Hon finns ini mig. Därför att hon älskade mig, finns hon ini mig. Därför skall jag låta henne stanna.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“...aspirava a uma paz que só a inocência na solidão pode proporcionar, a paz de um solitário inocente, que não abandonou nem traiu ninguém para estar só, um solitário que se conserva à margem do sangue e do sofrimento, sem que lhe possam ser pedidas contas.”
― Stig Dagerman, Island of the Doomed

“Jag saknar tro och kan därför aldrig bli någon lycklig människa, ty en lycklig människa skall aldrig behöva frukta att hennes liv är ett meningslöst irrande mot den vissa döden. Jag har varken ärvt en god eller fast punkt på jorden varifrån jag skulle kunna tilldraga mig en guds uppmärksamhet. Jag har heller inte ärvt skeptikerns väl dolda raseri eller ateistens brinnande oskuld. Jag vågar därför inte kasta sten på henne som tror på ting, på vilka jag tvivlar eller på honom som dyrkar ett tvivel, som vore inte även det omgivet av mörker. Den stenen skulle träffa mig själv, ty om en sak är jag fast övertygad: att människans behov av tröst är omättligt.”
― Stig Dagerman

“Judas himself could be sitting at our table, and we wouldn't ask him about Jesus. We would talk to him about the weather.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame

“People demanded of those who were suffering their way through the German autumn that they should learn from their misfortune. No one thought that hi her is a very bad teacher”
― Stig Dagerman , German Autumn

“L'idée me vient finalement que toute consolation ne prenant pas en compte ma liberté est trompeuse, qu'elle n'est que l'image réfléchie de mon désespoir.”
― Stig Dagerman, Notre besoin de consolation est impossible à rassasier

“Det är ett faktum som ingen kan bestrida att hon under hela denna långa tid inte en dag vikit från min sida. Om dagarna har hon ständigt varit i mina tankar. Om nätterna har hon varit i mina drömmar.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“Os pensamentos que zoam no meu crânio são locatários de uma noite, meia dúzia de pares sem casa num ninho de amor passageiro, o fragor do guindaste da draga virá igualizar tudo, os momentos de deliciosa angústia do meu coração são roubados à sociedade de armadores que me emprega”
― Stig Dagerman, Island of the Doomed