Janne Teller Quotes & Sayings

The reason dying is so easy is because death has no meaning ... And the reason death has no meaning is because life has no meaning. All the same, have fun!
Pierre Anthon — Janne Teller

And although we'd sworn we'd never become like them, that was exactly what was happening. We weren't even fifteen yet.
Thirteen, fourteen, adult, dead. — Janne Teller

It's all a waste of time. Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.
Pierre Anthon — Janne Teller

We cried because we had lost something and gained something else. And because it hurt both losing and gaining. And because we knew what we had lost but weren't as yet able to put into words what it was we had gained. — Janne Teller

Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything. — Janne Teller

If something's worth getting upset about, then there must be something worth getting happy about. And if something's worth getting happy about, then there must be something that matters. But there isnt!.. In a few years you'll all be dead and forgotten and diddly-squat, nothing, so you might just as well start getting used to it!
Pierre Anthon — Janne Teller

The rose, however, made us girls somewhat fainthearted, because it really was something we felt mattered, the white bridal dream with the wedding bouquet and the kiss from the man who was to be ours forever. But then Laura said that the lady who had given it to us had gotten divorced only five years later. And since many of our parents were also divorce, if indeed they had ever been married at all, that dream clearly wasn't worth our time. — Janne Teller

The door smiled. It was the first time I'd seen it do that. Pierre Anthon left the door ajar like a grinning abyss that would swallow me up into the outside with him if only I let myself go. Smiling at whom? At me, at us. I looked around the class. The uncomfortable silence told me the others had felt it too.
We were supposed to amount to something. — Janne Teller

Fighting's not a good idea, said Jon-Johan, and the other boys nodded, ending the discussion then and there, even though we girls probably lost some degree of respect for them on that occasion. — Janne Teller

Meaning is not something you can sell — Janne Teller

From the moment we are born, we begin to die. — Janne Teller

We need to realise we are Europeans before we belong to a region or a Nation. — Janne Teller

Suddenly I got shivers down my spine thinking about how many different people one and the same person can be. — Janne Teller

Even if you learn something and think you're good at it, there'll always be someone who's better.
Pierre Anthon — Janne Teller

We knew that everything was more about how it appeared than how it was. The most important thing, in any circumstance, was to amount to something that really looked like it was something. — Janne Teller

The Nation State as such is totally a construction: what we feel for it in terms of habits, traditions, countryside or nature could exist without the notion of Nation. — Janne Teller

But I was supposed to amount to something, be someone, so I stayed where I was and just looked the other way — Janne Teller

To be sure, there were still a lot of people against us, but the very intensity of the fight over the meaning of the heap of meaning could only indicate that the matter was of the greatest significance. And significance was the same as meaning, and the greatest significance was therefore the same as the greatest meaning.
And I only doubted a tiny little bit. — Janne Teller

We were supposed to amount to something. Something was the same as someone, and even if nobody ever said so out loud, it was hardly left unspoken, either. It was just in the air, or in the time, or in fence surrounding the school, or in our pillows, or in the soft toys that after having served us so loyally had now been unjustly discarded and left to gather dust in attics or basements. I hadn't known. — Janne Teller

You go to school to get a job, and you get a job to take time off to do nothing. Why not do nothing to begin with?
Pierre Anthon — Janne Teller

How come everyone's making like everthing that isn't important is very important, all the while they're so busy pretending what's really important isn't important at all? — Janne Teller

How come you girls want to be dating?.. First you fall in love, then you start dating, then you fall out of love, and then you split up again.
Pierre Anthon - to the author and Ursula-Marie — Janne Teller

Without knowing exactly what, I knew that the fire was something that had to do with the meaning. I decided I wasn't going to forget it, no matter what happened. No matter that the fire wasn't something that could be added to the heap, or that I was ever going to be able to explain in any way to Pierre Anthon. — Janne Teller

He must have gotten all that knowledge from the newspapers. I don't see the point, collecting all that knowledge others have already discovered. — Janne Teller

Spring was nothing but a reminder to us that we, too, would soon be gone — Janne Teller