Jo Nesbo Quotes & Sayings

The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway. — Jo Nesbo

A personality disorder doesn't mean he is stupid. Sufferers are just as good, frequently better, at achieving their aims. What distinguishes them from us is that they want different things. — Jo Nesbo

That was what life was: a process of destruction, a disintegration from what at the outset was perfect. The only suspense involved was whether we would be destroyed in one sudden act or slowly. — Jo Nesbo

In most sports, your brain and your body will cooperate ... But in rock climbing, it is the other way around. Your brain doesn't see the point in climbing upwards. Your brain will tell you to keep as low as possible, to cling to the wall and not get any higher. You have to have your brain persuading your body to do the right movements. — Jo Nesbo

already imprisoned inside themselves. Prisons of hatred and self-contempt he recognised all too well. — Jo Nesbo

Ceri loves Sci-Fi - " Game of Thrones "
also - Harry Hole , Lisbeeth Salander, Funky Scando Fiction, Supports Swans, Nirvana, — Jo Nesbo

He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another from the bottle of whisky room service had brought up: Jameson. The only good thing ever to come out of Ireland. — Jo Nesbo

Somehow it felt like everything was missing, and asphalt and the bridge and railway line. He came to the end of the road and then everything turned into nothingness. It's over. How he just hated that word. — Jo Nesbo

It's a calculated risk, you see. You're either laughing all over your face or you're in deep, deep shit. Whether to take the risk or not. If you take the gamble, you may fall off the twig frozen stiff one night and not thaw out till spring. Bottle it and you might not have anywhere to nest when you return. These are, as it were, the eternal dilemmas you're confronted with. — Jo Nesbo

[Rakel] It feels a bit like jumping out of a burning house. Falling is better than burning.
[Harry] At least until you land.
[Rakel] I've come to realize that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being. — Jo Nesbo

There's a strong social urge in man to be needed. — Jo Nesbo

Can you feel it? The vibration? It's the energy from everyone around us. It's in the air. If you're dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It's true!

- Runa Molnes — Jo Nesbo

So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking." "And afterward?" "I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don't know why in fact, it was like a big cleanup. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: 'Hi, we can't meet anymore. It was nice knowing — Jo Nesbo

Where are we going now?" Harry asked. "To the circus! I promised a friend I would pop by one day. And today is one day, isn't it. — Jo Nesbo

New; it had been lying there with all the other half-thought, half-chewed, half-dreamed ideas. The third chicken had been killed in the same way as Sylvia, with an electric cutting loop. He went to the place where the floorboards had absorbed the blood and crouched down. If the Snowman had killed the last chicken, why had he used the loop and not the hatchet? Simple. Because the hatchet had disappeared in the depths of the forest somewhere. So this must have happened after the murder. He had come all the way back here and slaughtered a chicken. But why? A kind of voodoo ritual? A sudden inspiration? Bullshit - this killing machine stuck to the — Jo Nesbo

For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write! — Jo Nesbo

It's strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself. — Jo Nesbo

Harry had felt the gnawing ache for alcohol from the moment he woke up that morning. First as an instinctive physical craving, then as a panic-stricken fear because he had put a distance between himself and his medicine by not taking his hip flask or any money with him to work. Now the ache was entering a new phase in which it was both a wholly physical pain and a feeling of blank terror that he would be torn to pieces. The enemy below was pulling and tugging at the chains, the dogs were snarling up at him from the pit, somewhere in his stomach beneath his heart. God, how he hated them. He hated them as much as they hated him. — Jo Nesbo

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time. — Jo Nesbo

Christ, we're living in Sydney, the only town in the world where people are closet heteros. — Jo Nesbo

What determined the outcome of a life? A series of random events you had no control over, or did some cosmic gravity pull everything in the direction it was predestined to go? — Jo Nesbo

... the girl he loved, but wished he didn't love, because he didn't want to love someone who was just like him, imperfect, with faults and failings, another self-sacrificing, pathetic slave to love, who obediently read people's lips but never spoke herself, who subordinated herself and found her reward in that. But at the same time, he couldn't manage not to love her. She was everything he wished he didn't want. She was his own humiliation. And the best, the most human, the most beautiful thing he knew. — Jo Nesbo

A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others. — Jo Nesbo

And, according to that Hume guy, the fact that I had until now woken up every morning in the same body, into the same world, where what had happened had actually happened, was no guarantee that the same thing would happen again tomorrow morning. — Jo Nesbo

If life is such a painful experience and we can't change that, why can't this person just be allowed to die? — Jo Nesbo

For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle. — Jo Nesbo

Oh, yes, they're still angry. At Third World aid, cuts in the defence budget, women priests, marriages for homosexuals, our new countrymen, all the things you would guess would upset these old boys. In their hearts they're still fascists. — Jo Nesbo

There is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his stature than a woman telling him she loves him. and however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her. — Jo Nesbo

Four years later, after Mathias had killed a further four women, and he could see that all the murders were an attempt to reconstruct the murder of his mother, he concluded that he was mad. — Jo Nesbo

We're probably more like our parents than we'd like to believe. — Jo Nesbo

Was going to drown. Woo had attached him to the drain at the bottom of the pool with his own handcuffs. He looked up. The moon was shining down on him through a filter of water. He stretched his free arm up and out of the water. Hell, the pool was only one meter deep here! Harry crouched and tried to stand up, stretched with all his might. The handcuff cut into his thumb, but still his mouth was twenty centimeters below the surface. He noticed the shadow at the edge of the pool moving away. Shit! Don't panic, he thought. Panic uses up oxygen. He sank to the bottom and examined the grille with his fingers. It was made of steel and was totally immovable, it didn't budge even when he grabbed it with both hands and pulled. How long could he hold his breath? One minute? Two? All his muscles ached, his temples throbbed and red stars were dancing in front of his eyes. He tried to jerk himself loose. His mouth was dry with fear, his brain had started producing — Jo Nesbo

Life owes you, but sometimes you have to be your own fucking debt collector. And if we have to burn in hell for it, heaven's going to be sparsely populated. — Jo Nesbo

Sometimes I think I've got something, only in the next minute to be thrown into confusion once again. I don't like being confused; I have no tolerance for it. That's why I wish either I didn't have this ability to capture details, or I had a greater ability to assemble them into a picture that made some sense. — Jo Nesbo

An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I'm afraid to say, has been understood. — Jo Nesbo

Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before - to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love. — Jo Nesbo

frightening? Vigdis A. panted — Jo Nesbo

What was it Harry used to say? Intuition is only the sum of many small but specific things the brain hasn't managed to put a name to yet. — Jo Nesbo

We're doomed to be do-gooders for the rest of our lives and doomed to fail. But, happily, truth is a relative business. — Jo Nesbo

Watching TV gives you confidence. When you see how stupid people generally are on the box it makes you feel smart. And scientific studies show that people who feel smart perform better than people who feel stupid. — Jo Nesbo

Rikshospital. He was in the rhythm now. Time was not chopped up by events; it flowed in an even stream. — Jo Nesbo

Sharing secrets binds people together though," Harry whispered into her hair. "And that's not always what people want. — Jo Nesbo

Because they drive on the left in China, — Jo Nesbo

Aristotle wrote that the human soul is purged by the fear and compassion that tragedy evokes. — Jo Nesbo

Watched the close-cropped, long-legged policeman with the bad back stride quickly out of the canteen. — Jo Nesbo

Nybakk's shotgun in Oppsal was the easier option. Furthermore, a shotgun gave him more room to maneuver. To retrieve the rifle — Jo Nesbo

It was the logic of retaliation that created the constitutional state. The enshrined promise of an eye for an eye, the sinner burning in hell or at least dangling for the gallows. Revenge is basically the foundation of civilization — Jo Nesbo

They're so rich and revered that they have neither electricity nor running water. Only social climbers have a sauna and a Jacuzzi. — Jo Nesbo

Should a person be punished for showing no consideration towards an idiot behaving like an idiot? — Jo Nesbo

Love's the sum total of all the little things you can never really put your finger on. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops but you get warm. — Jo Nesbo

If every baby was a perfect miracle, life was basically a process of degeneration. — Jo Nesbo

Then two identical Cadillac Fleetwoods (special Secret Service cars flown in from the US) and the President sitting in one of them. Which one was kept secret. Or perhaps he was sitting in both, Harry thought. One for Jekyll and one for Hyde. — Jo Nesbo

The social space between people who don't know each other is form one to three and a half metres. - Beate Lonne — Jo Nesbo

What a country of lazy shits, with fucking hypocritical politicians claiming that people actually wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because it made it a human right to shirk their jobs, and who the hell wouldn't vote for a party that gave you three days off without a doctor's note, gave you carte blanche to sit at home and jerk off or go skiing or recover from a hangover? The Socialist Party knew, of course, what a perk this was, but still tried to appear responsible, preened themselves with their "trust in most people" and declared the right to malinger as some kind of social reform. The Progress Party was even more fucking infuriating, buying itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothering to conceal the fact. — Jo Nesbo

I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan, I'm a 'Wire' fan, I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump. — Jo Nesbo

I don't have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms ... I can write anywhere. — Jo Nesbo

But there is always a point where things can no longer be put off, where you can't be weak one more day and promise yourself that tomorrow, tomorrow you will start that other life. — Jo Nesbo

You can't see a person more nakedly than that, when they don't know they're being watched, studied. — Jo Nesbo

Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller. — Jo Nesbo

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting. — Jo Nesbo

Harry sensed the onset of resignation. No, he bloody didn't! On the FBI course they had examined cases where it had taken more than ten years to catch the killer. As a rule, it had been one tiny random detail, it seemed, that had solved the case. However, what actually cracked it was the fact that they had never given up, they had gone all fifteen rounds and if the opponent was still standing they screamed for a return fight. — Jo Nesbo

Crime Squad would have been great if it weren't for the murders. Murders were shit. Murders meant long hours, writing reports, endless meetings and loads of stressed-out people. But at least they got free food from the cafeteria when they worked overtime. — Jo Nesbo

Suddenly he realised why so many of the inmates went to the young man to talk. It was the silence. The beckoning vacuum of someone who simply listens without reaction or judgement. Who extracts your words and your secrets from you without doing anything at all. — Jo Nesbo

Revenge is a frequent motive in suicides, you know. They feel it is someone's fault their lives have been unsuccessful, and they want to inflict this guilt on others by committing suicide. — Jo Nesbo

you should never postpone your pleasures, that there was no guarantee that you would live another day. — Jo Nesbo

Had they sensed that there were ghosts? That despite it being brand new and unspoilt, and despite no one having died in a car accident or a plane crash yet, there were ghosts. — Jo Nesbo

The goddess Nemesis, Bertol Grimmer's favourite motif after the War. The goddess of revenge. — Jo Nesbo

The fog was back. It seeped in through the streets, from the cracks around the closed windows behind the trees in the avenue, out of the blue door which opened after they had heard Weber's abrupt bark over the intercom, and out through the keyholes in the doors they passed on the way upstairs. — Jo Nesbo

The great thing about facts is that you don't have to ponder whether they're desirable or not. — Jo Nesbo

There was a saying during the war: Those who decide late will always decide right. At Christmas in 1943 we could see that our front was moving backwards, but we had no real idea how bad it was. Anyway, no one could accuse Sindre of changing like a weather-vane. Unlike those at home who sat on their backsides during the war and suddenly rushed to join the Resistance in the last months. We used to call them the latter-day saints'. A few of them today swell the ranks of those who make public statements about the Norwegians' heroic efforts for the right side. — Jo Nesbo

Do what boxers do, sway with the punches. Don't resist. If any of what happens at work gets to you, just let it. You won't be able to shut it out in the long term anyway. Take it bit by bit, release it like a dam, don't let it collect until the wall develops cracks. — Jo Nesbo

Everyone has a need to do penance. It's a basic need, like washing. It's about harmony, an absolutely essential inner balance. It's the balance we call morality. — Jo Nesbo

I just know that when I'm walking on the wafer-thin ice of happiness, I'm terrified, so terrified that I wish it was over, that I was already in the water. — Jo Nesbo

Everyone asks what the meaning of life is, but no one asks about the meaning of death. — Jo Nesbo

Sometimes we're wrong when we think that we know the truth about our parents. — Jo Nesbo

I think I was righteous. I saw myself as the good guy in my own movie. I didn't get into many fights when I was younger, but when I did, they were righteous. I always thought I was defending something good. I fought for friends who couldn't fight for themselves. I was still being selfish and arrogant, but I was focused on what was fair and unfair. — Jo Nesbo

I'm just one of the many millions of lonely souls trying to live on the face of this earth. I'm trying to acquit myself without making too many mistakes. Now and then I may even be on top of things enough to try and do some good. That's all. — Jo Nesbo

I'm not a big crime reader, but I'm reading Michael Connelly's 'The Reversal.' I'm going back to his novels. I'm also reading Keith Richards' 'Life.' I'm always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late '60s and early '70s and the youth culture becoming an industry. — Jo Nesbo

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction. — Jo Nesbo

Because we're the police,' Harry said. 'And not giggling concubines. — Jo Nesbo

Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living. — Jo Nesbo

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder. — Jo Nesbo

Harry went closer and could see she was attractive. And there was something about the relaxed way she spoke, the way she looked him straight in the eye, that suggested that she was also self-assured. A professional woman, he guessed. Something requiring a cool, rational mind. Estate agent, head of a department in a bank, politician or something like that. Well-off at any rate, of that he was fairly sure. It wasn't just the coat and the colossal house behind her, but something in the attitude and the high, aristocratic cheekbones. She walked down the steps as if walking along a straight line, made it seem easy. Ballet lessons, Harry thought. — Jo Nesbo

The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn't change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants. — Jo Nesbo

Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I'm the lowest grade.'
'I didn't mean to criticize you.'
'I promise to be better in my next life ... — Jo Nesbo

We don't punish people because they are evil, but because they make bad choices, choices that are bad for the herd. Morality isn't heaven-sent or eternal, just a set of rules that benefit the herd. — Jo Nesbo

This man, commenting on the attack at Dennis Kebab, says we need more racists like Sverre Olsen to regain control of Norway. In the interview the word "racist" is used as a term of respect. Does the accused consider himself a "racist"? — Jo Nesbo

Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge. — Jo Nesbo

She stroked his shoulder, up as far as his neck and back again. Over his chest. And he thought she must be able to feel his heart beating and that she was like the Pioneer TV they had stopped producing because it was too good, and you could see it was good because the black part of the picture was so black. — Jo Nesbo

Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel. — Jo Nesbo

Without any prior warning, the ground suddenly gave way. He had a falling sensation and he lost all sense of reality. There weren't four colleagues sitting in front of him in an office, it wasn't a murder case, it wasn't a warm summer's day in Oslo, no-one called Rakel and Oleg ever existed. He knew that this brief panic attack could be followed by others and he hung on by his fingertips. Harry lifted his mug of coffee and drank slowly while he collected himself. He determined that when he heard the sound of the mug being put down on the desk he would be back, here, in this reality. — Jo Nesbo

Buildings on the riverbank. He took the last hundred-krone notes and put them in his money belt. He had heard that in St. Petersburg — Jo Nesbo

A few days later Kurt called him to say that Harry Hole had been sent to the front, to some God-forsaken place in Sweden. Brandhaug had literally rubbed his hands with glee. — Jo Nesbo

Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself. — Jo Nesbo

I have problems with a religion which says that faith in itself is enough for a ticket to heaven. In other words, that the ideal is your ability to manipulate your own common sense to accept something your intellect rejects. It's the same model of intellectual submission that dictatorships have used throughout time, the concept of a higher reasoning without any obligation to discharge the burden of proof. — Jo Nesbo

I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in 'The Leopard,' in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. 'Phantom' has less blood. — Jo Nesbo

You sound like someone who thinks he has to fight the whole world," Joseph said. "But if you don't drop your guard now and then, your arms will be too weary to fight. — Jo Nesbo

He feels a need to be understood. Most people do, you know. — Jo Nesbo

The statistical probability of being murdered in Norway was about one in ten thousand. When — Jo Nesbo

Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament. — Jo Nesbo

Most of the water, however, did not run into the wall, but down it, because water, like cowardice and lust, always finds the lowest level. — Jo Nesbo