Solvej Balle > Quotes

“It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The fog had lifted. Those strange days were past. I knew I couldn’t hold onto the morning’s hazy gray light for long, I knew that I had been keeping the past and the present out, that I had been like a human pilot light. Gone were the featureless mornings. Gone, my time at the bottom of the sea, gone and irretrievable. Gone, the fog which had been the greatest bliss but which—it seems to me now—requires one to be in a state of the utmost naivety, to dwell in the halls of folly, to surrender to the gentle grip of apathy.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Maybe we are a weather system—condensation and evaporation: we are together, we look at one another, we touch one another, we condense, we come together, we make love, we fall asleep, we wake and revert to our strange bond, a quiet weather system with no natural disasters.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“the knowledge that everything can change in an instant, that something which cannot happen and which we absolutely do not expect, is nonetheless a possibility. That time stands still. That gravity is suspended. That the logic of the world and the laws of nature break down. That we are forced to acknowledge that our expectations about the constancy of the world are on shaky ground. There are no guarantees and behind all that we ordinarily regard as certain lie improbable exceptions, sudden cracks and inconceivable breaches of the usual laws.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Often, we would simply come to the conclusion that you cannot know everything, that you have to accept some displacement in life, that you have to expect inconsistencies, and that was what we encountered: patterns and inconsistencies, two worlds trying to merge.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“They had an air of peace about them, Marie and Philip, which reminded me of the time, five years ago, when I first met Thomas. The sudden feeling of sharing something inexplicable, a sense of wonder at the existence of the other - the one person who makes everything simple - a feeling of being calmed and thrown into turmoil at one and the same time.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I have not found a way out of the eighteenth of November, but I have found roads and paths through the day, narrow passages and tunnels I can move along. I cannot get out, but I can find ways in.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“simply because the summer has been on the cool side. As a meteorologist one is almost expected to deliver particular weather conditions at particular times of year, she said. A proper summer. A proper winter. As if you hadn’t done your job until you had delivered a certain sort of weather. Aren’t we going to have a winter this year? As if the seasons were a concept of sorts that we dragged around with us. From childhood perhaps, she said, with winter snow and summer sun. Or perhaps not even that. Perhaps the human seasons really only existed in films or in our photo albums. Especially if you have children. She did it herself: took pictures of typical seasons. She had noticed that she took more pictures when the seasons lived up to our expectations of them: pictures of snow in winter and bright sunshine in summer, a hot day on the beach, red and yellow leaves and a child in rain boots in autumn—and always snaps with sandals in summer, even in summers when most days were rain boot days. As if we had templates for the seasons and when everything fits we take a picture. As if it is an event in itself that the weather has got it right.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume II

“Our love has always been microscopic. It is something in the cells, some molecules, some compounds outside our control, which collide in the air around us, sound waves that form unique harmonies when we speak, it happens at the atomic level or even that of smaller particles.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“time is not a circle and it is not a line, it is not a wheel and it is not”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume II

“My morning started in the same way as before. I became aware of the room around me, a day unfolding; I could still hold onto the feeling of a gray, misty morning for a few notes of birdsong, four or five notes, later only three, maybe two, no more, then my moment splintered and I remembered everything, my thoughts were already scanning the room, they had drifted to the windowsill, out into the morning, to the birds in the tree, to houses and streets where, one after another, people were entering the eighteenth of November in a firmly established pattern, convinced that they were embarking on this day for the very first time.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I have exchanged my hope for a mood and a frying pan.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“The world is not a calm sea where all you have to do is refrain from rocking the boat, she said. The world is a rocking boat, a ship in a storm, and when you're capsized, that's why. Because the world is a place that throws you overboard.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume IV

“seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Recalling the way I felt last night, that sense of change and hope, and then my dismay at the rude reversion to the same lopsided moon, I cannot help but feel that the world’s been pulling my leg. That not only was I mistaken, but that I had fallen for an April Fool’s prank. As if the moon had altered its appearance just long enough for me to imagine that there really was a difference, only then to act all innocent just hanging there in the sky, totally deadpan.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“I had to be careful, I told myself. I already know that I leave a mark. I consume the world. I sustain burns and sprained ankles. But I also put other people in danger. I drag them out of their eighteenth of November. Out of their routine…. I have to be careful. I am a danger to my surroundings.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume II

“Henry believed that anyone paying attention to the world around them would inevitably become interested in the Romans—or at least in the fall of the Roman Empire. For who could doubt that we live in a time which resembles theirs? That we are the Romans”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume III

“It was one thing for me to have encountered a fracture in the normal progression of time,”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“There is something alarming about the thought of being bound to a random person. There is the certainty of having gained a travel companion, but also the sense of having been assigned some of the responsibility for their baggage.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume III

“There are open windows, breadless birds, lost routines.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume III

“The minute we deviate from simple, practical matters, the conversation lapses imperceptibly into a kind of audio link, a muted love mumble. Our communication, initially meaningful and coherent, turns into a series of fitful exchanges containing neither sentences nor information: little words and sounds meant -- I suppose -- to keep the link between us open, but which, instead, make all too clear how far apart we are.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I

“Evenings when you can sit outside at midnight and listen to the darkness.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume II

“Katselen ympärilleni, ja koko ajan on jotain löydettävää. Se ei lopu. Sitä poimii ja poimii, ja kohta kun polku kääntyy, löytyy lisää.”
― Solvej Balle, Om udregning af rumfang III

“It is my mood that chooses the words for me. I have a mood. There is a lot you can do with such a thing. It can select words from the whole lexical palette, it can call language a palette, it can give things colors, even when they have no colors. I talk to no one, but my world acquires more and more details, I pluck words from a world with many voices, from a mood that lends color, that rubs off. But lending color to things takes up space. The palette overflows with hues. Too many words pour in, the day becomes heavier, slower, comes to a halt.”
― Solvej Balle

“Jeg tenkte at det ikke er noe poeng å lengte etter steder man har vært når man selv har dratt derfra. Da må man lengte etter noe annet. Etter å kjenne det stedet man er, kanskje.”
― Solvej Balle, Om udregning af rumfang V

“traditions don’t need to harmonize”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume II

“suddenly Olga felt the urge to go outside, into the night. She suggested that, for once, we take a nocturnal stroll together. That in the dark you feel a little more like a human being.”
― Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume IV