Min Kamp Quotes

“Was it Jesus you saw a picture of?” he says and looks up at me. If it had not been for the friendly voice and the long pause before the question, I would have thought he was making fun of me. He finds it a little embarrassing that I am a Christian; all he wants is for me not to be different from the other kids, and of all the kids in the neighbourhood, his youngest son is the only one to call himself a Christian.
But he is really wondering about this.
I feel a flutter of joy because he actually cares, and at the same time I become a bit offended that he underestimates me like that.
I shake my head.
“It wasn’t Jesus,” I say.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1

“I am alive, I have my own children and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn’t be afraid of their father.

They aren’t. I know that.

When I enter a room, they don’t cringe, they don't look down at the floor, they don’t dart off as soon as they glimpse an opportunity, no, if they look at me, it is not a look of indifference, and if there is anyone I am happy to be ignored by it is them. If there is anyone I am happy to be taken for granted by, it is them. And should they have completely forgotten I was there when they turn forty themselves, I will thank them and take a bow and accept the bouquets.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“Jeg er hans sønn. Historien om ham, Kai Åge Knausgård, er historien om meg, Karl Ove Knausgård. Den har jeg fortalt. Jeg har overdrevet, jeg har lagt til, jeg har trukket fra, og det er mye jeg ikke har forstått. Men det er ikke ham jeg har beskrevet, det er mitt bilde av ham. Det er ferdig nå.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård

“Who I am to them I have no idea, probably a vague memory of someone they once knew in their childhood years, for they have done so much to one another in their lives since then, so much has happened and with such impact that the small incidents that took place in their childhoods have no more gravity than the dust stirred up by a passing car, or the seeds of a withering dandelion dispersed by the breath from a small mouth. And oh, wasn't the latter a fine image, of how event after event is dispersed in the air above the little meadow of one's own history, only to fall between the blades of grass and vanish?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 3

“There was nothing left of my feelings for those I had just spent several hours with. The whole crowd of them could have burned in hell for all I cared.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“But what do you say to have any impact on a man who at one time admired the Spice Girls? To influence a man who once wrote an enthusiastic essay about the sitcom Friends?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“Hjertet mitt banket, for jeg stod ikke bare på bunnen av en skog med himmelen over meg langt der oppe, jeg stod også på bunnen av meg selv og så opp i noe lyst og åpent og lykkelig.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård