Jussi Adler-Olsen Quotes & Sayings

He dropped his pile of papers onto the desk and indicated the sheet on top. "Here is the common I nominate in all the fires, Carl." "You what?" "The common I nominate." "Common denominator, Assad. A compound noun. What common denominator? — Jussi Adler-Olsen

It came from down where laughter is a defense and not an outstretched hand. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Her boozy breath was day-old, but of quality of Origin. Malt whisky, Carl guessed. The air was so thick with it, an expert would probably be able to determine the vintage. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Assad: 'I have written it just down here.'

He Pointed to a number of Arabic symbols that could just as well have meant it was going to snow in the Lofoten Islands in the morning. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

This was what Ditlev loved: ceaseless gunfire, ceaseless killing, flapping specks in the sky terminated in an orgy of color. The slow drizzle of birds' bodies falling from above. The eagerness of the men to reload their weapons. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Existed in the eternal dilemma: to give freedom free rein, or to rein freedom in? — Jussi Adler-Olsen

He'd make her work so hard that a job as a cardboard-box presser at the margerine factory would seem like paradise. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Assad whistled a few notes of one of his native country's melancholic songs. It sounded as though he was whistling backwards — Jussi Adler-Olsen

So, I suppose you just have a sense of where it is. And you don't have to be precise, is that it?"
"Allah is great. He has such wide shoulders."
Carl stuck out his lower lip in a pout. Of course Allah did. What was he thinking, anyway? — Jussi Adler-Olsen

But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Wasn't this the way it was for most people? The time they lived in was an open invitation to a cocktail of self-denial and self-glorification. And if you didn't like the situation you were stuck in, there was always the option of running away from yourself; running away from opinions, from your marriage, from old values, from trends that had otherwise meant so much yesterday. The problem was just that out there, among all the new, you found nothing of what you were looking for deep down inside, because tomorrow it would all be meaningless again. It had become an eternal and fruitless hunt for your own shadow, and the was pitiful. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Carl sent a message from his brain to his hands that it was still illegal to strangle people. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

And so it came to be. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

In tiny Denmark the system wasso ingenious that if you knew some dirt about somebody, they also knew something just as bad about you. If it wasn't hushed up, the one person's offense quickly infected the other's. A strange, practical principle that meant that no one would say anything about anyone else, not even if they were caught with their hands in the biscuit tin. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Carl: Do I happen to see a twinkle in your eye, or do you always look so fantastic Lis?

Lis: Carl dear, the twinkle in my eye is reserved for my husband and children, When are you going to accept that?

Carl: I'll accept it the day the light vanishes and eternal darkness swallows me up along with the rest of the earth. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

And now the past stalked about like a purposeless stray animal among heaps of rubbish and junk that no one wanted. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

If you want to know what the camel stole from your kitchen yesterday, then you shouldn;t slit open its stomach. You should stare into its arsehole. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Carl responding to something Camilla did, "The next time you touch my equipment, I'm going to puncture your silicon boobs and then claim it happened because you resisted arrest after threatening to slug me with one of your brother's trophies. When I slap the cuffs on you, and you're waiting for the doctor as you stare at the blank white wall of a prison cell in Hillerod, you'll dream about taking back that pat you just gave me. Shall we proceed, or do do have anything to add regarding my nobler parts? — Jussi Adler-Olsen

She was a bitch,' Carl suddenly heard somebody say in the background, and that apparently refreshed everyone's memory.

yes, thought Carl with satisfaction. It's the good stable arseholes like us who are remembered best. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

When he turned round with the cup to his mouth, nostrils titillated by the aroma of a sun that had once shone on a Colombian coffee farmer's fields, Klavs Jeppensen's chair was empty. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

following his dad and uncle.' Rose — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Bak stood a moment, as though considering whether the sum total of their shared working life was ending in a minus or a plus. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

mean it wouldn't be the first time a man's — Jussi Adler-Olsen

I drive a taxi and a car and a truck and a T-55 tank and also a T-62 and armored cars and the motorcycles with and without sidecars. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

It was late in September and a little more than twenty degrees, so what the hell were people smiling for? They ought to be raising their faces toward the ozone layer in horror. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Was she pregnant then?' asked Assad. Judging by the number of family members in his photos, it was a feminine condition with which he was quite familiar. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighted against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and played out against each other - right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together — Jussi Adler-Olsen

But then one morning when I'd been on night shift, she miscarried suddenly and severely. The doctor said it seemed as though she had provoked it herself. I found that hard to believe, given how much she'd been looking forward to having the baby. At any rate, there were large blue bruises on her abdomen. But it's impossible to know about these things. There are a lot of mixed feelings involved when a woman faces raising an unplanned child on her own. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

In this area, people watched reality shows and awful quiz shows, gorging themselves on junk food and moving further and further away from the opportunities that a good education or realistic ambitions could provide. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Smoking is extremely hazardous to you and those around you it said on the label. He glanced around. The few termites that might thrive down here could probably handle it. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

it before.' 'I see. Then perhaps you — Jussi Adler-Olsen