Knut Hamsun Quotes & Sayings

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave. — Knut Hamsun

When I got outside, I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you are not a bungler. — Knut Hamsun

He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk.
'Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so often?' asked Rolandsen.
'I've no idea,' Ragna answered.
'You must think I'm sent by old Laban.'
The girls giggled. 'When he says Laban he really means Adam.'
'I've come to save you,' said Rolandsen. 'You have to beware of the fishermen around here, they're out-and-out seducers!'
'There's no greater seducer than you,' said another girl. 'You've got two kids already. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'
'How can you talk like that, Nicoline? You've always been a thorn in my flesh and you'll be the death of me, you know damned well. But as for you, Ragna, I'm going to save your soul wether you like it or not! — Knut Hamsun

Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything - about everything I own in the world. — Knut Hamsun

The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came. — Knut Hamsun

I have gone to the forest — Knut Hamsun

A little way down the road I turned, and saw how his wife and daughter took him up. And I thought to myself: no, 'tis not all roses when one goes a-wandering. At the next place I came to I learned that he had been with the army, as quartermaster-sergeant; then he went mad over a lawsuit he lost, and was shut up in an asylum for some time. Now in the spring his trouble broke out again; perhaps it was my coming that had given the final touch. But the lightning insight in his eyes at the moment when the madness came upon him! I think of him now and again; he was a lesson to me. 'Tis none so easy to judge of men, who are wise or mad. And God preserve us all from being known for what we are! — Knut Hamsun

The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too. — Knut Hamsun

At that moment not a single sad thought entered my mind; I forgot my privation and felt soothed by the sight of the harbour, which lay there lovely and peaceful in the semi-darkness. — Knut Hamsun

For I mean to roam and think and make great irons red-hot. — Knut Hamsun

He was hungry, and his first thought was to collect a dozen or two gulls' eggs to make a meal. But embryo chicks were forming in all of them. So he rowed out to do some fishing and was more succesful. He lived on fish from day to day and sang and whiled the time away and ruled over the island. When it rained he too shelter beneath a splendid overhangig rock. At night he slept on a patch of grass and the sun never set. — Knut Hamsun

Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity. — Knut Hamsun

There was a merciless gnawing in my chest, a queer silent labor was going on in there. I pictured a score of nice teeny-weeny animals that cocked their heads to one side and gnawed a bit, then cocked their heads to the other side and gnawed a bit, lay perfectly still for a moment, then began anew and bored their way in without a sound and without haste, leaving empty stretches behind them wherever they went. — Knut Hamsun

God had poked His finger down into my nerves and gently, almost without thinking, brought a little confusion among those threads. And God had pulled His finger back, and behold
there were filaments and fine rootlike threads on His finger from the threads of my nerves. And thereremained an open hole behind His finger which was the finger of God, and a wound in my brain behind the path of His finger.
But after God had touched me with the finger of His hand, He let me be and touched me no more and let nothing evil come upon me. He let me depart in peace and He let me depart with the open hole. And nothing evil will come upon me from God who is the Lord through all Eternity ... — Knut Hamsun

However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science. — Knut Hamsun

Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop. But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change. — Knut Hamsun

To me, it seems unspeakably shabby to make a fuss over charity. You're walking along the street one day, the weather is so and so and you see such and such people, all of which builds up a certain mood in you. Suddenly you catch sight of a face, a child's face, a beggar's face
let's say a beggar's face
which makes you tremble. A strange sensation vibrates through your soul, and you stamp your foot and come to a halt. This face has struck an exceptionally sensitive chord in you, and you lure the beggar into an entranceway and press a ten-krone bill into his hand. If you give me away by as much as a world, I'll kill you! you whisper, and you fairly grind your teeth and shed tears of anger saying it. That's how important it is to you to remain undiscovered. And this can happen repeatedly, day after day, so that often you end up in the worst kind of scrape yourself, without a penny in your pocket ... — Knut Hamsun

The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned ... — Knut Hamsun

What would it profit us, after all, even from a purely practical viewpoint, if we stripped life of all poetry, all dreams, all beautiful mysteries, all lies? What is truth, can you tell me that? You see, we only advanced by way of symbols, and we change the symbols as we progress. — Knut Hamsun

Wasn't Pan sitting in a tree watching to see how I would comport myself? Wasn't his belly open, and wasn't he hunched over so that he seemed to be drinking from his own belly? But all this he did only so he could cock his eye and watch me, and the whole tree shook from his silent laughter when he saw that my thoughts were running away with me. — Knut Hamsun

fraudulent blue ozone — Knut Hamsun

And love became the world's beginning and the world's ruler; but all its ways are full of flowers and blood, flowers and blood. — Knut Hamsun

Light dresses, blue eyes, the tinkling of glasses, the sea, the white sails. We sang snatches of song. And our cheeks became rosy. — Knut Hamsun

The thought of God began to occupy me. It seemed to me in the highest degree indefensible of Him to interfere every time I sought for a place, and to upset the whole thing, while all the time I was but imploring enough for a daily meal. — Knut Hamsun

Well, God be with you,' she said as she finally left him.
'I'm sure He is,' he replied.
She gave a start. 'Are you certain of that?'
'He has every reason to be. Obviously He's Lord over all Creation, but it can't be anything special to be god of animals and mountains. It's really us human beings that make Him what He is. So why shouldn't He be with us?'
Having delivered this impressive speech, Rolandsen looked rather pleased with himself. The curate's wife would be puzzling over him as she walked home. Ha-ha, it was not so surprising that the little dome resting on his shoulders should have made such a great invention after all!
But now the cognac had arrived. — Knut Hamsun

One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word. — Knut Hamsun

Language must resound with all the harmonies of music. The writer must always, at all times, find the tremulous word which captures the thing and is able to draw a sob from my soul by its very rightness. — Knut Hamsun

The ships whose masts I saw outlined against the sky looked, with their black hulls, like silent monsters that were raising their hackles and lying in wait for me. — Knut Hamsun

A word can be transformed into a coulour, light, a smell; it is the writer's task to use it in such a way that it serves, never fails, can never be ignored. — Knut Hamsun

Never stand around saying 'Poor thing' and being pitiful
when things are being killed. It makes them tough and harder to kill.
Remember that! — Knut Hamsun

I see stars before my eyes, and my thoughts are swept up into a hurricane of light. — Knut Hamsun

You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice
that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should. — Knut Hamsun

After an hour my senses begin to vibrate in a definite rhythm, I tune into the great stillness, I tune in. I gaze at the crescent moon sitting like a white shell in the sky, and I have a feeling of love for it, I feel I'm blushing. It's the moon, I say softly and passionately, it's the moon! And my heart beats toward it with a gentle throbbing. It lasts for several minutes. It blows a little, a strange wind is coming, an unusual blast of air. What is it? I look around and see no one. The wind calls me and my soul bows in answer to the call,37 I feel myself lifted out of my sphere, pressed to an invisible breast, my eyes are moist with tears, I tremble - God is somewhere near looking at me. This lasts for another few minutes. I turn my head, the strange blast of air is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit wandering soundlessly through the forest. . . . — Knut Hamsun

I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace. — Knut Hamsun

Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us! — Knut Hamsun

I was conscious all the time that I was following mad whims without being able to do anything about it ... . Despite my alienation from myself at that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me. — Knut Hamsun

Fall has arrived and has already begun to put everything into a deep sleep; flies and other insects have suffered their first setback, and up in the trees and down on the ground you can hear the sounds of struggling life, puttering , ceaselessly rustling, laboring not to perish. — Knut Hamsun

I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face - I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down! — Knut Hamsun

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow. — Knut Hamsun

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation. — Knut Hamsun

And love was creation's source,creation's ruler;
but all love's ways are strewn with blossoms and blood, blossoms and blood. — Knut Hamsun

But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways. — Knut Hamsun

What if one were up there, drifting about among suns and feeling the tails of comets fan one's forehead! How small the earth was and how puny the people; a Norway of two million provincial souls and a mortgage bank to help feed them! What was life worth at such a rate? You elbowed yourself ahead in the sweat of your face for a few mortal years, only to perish all the same, all the same! — Knut Hamsun

There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thoughts could reach. — Knut Hamsun

I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. — Knut Hamsun

My heart understands all, and it no longer beats, it peals. — Knut Hamsun

I believe I can read a little in the souls of those around me; maybe it is not so. Oh, when I have a good day I feel as if I can peer deep into other people's souls, although I don't have a particularly good head on my shoulders. We sit in a room, some men and women and I, and I seem to see what is going on in the hearts of these people and what they think of me. I put something into every flashing glance of their eyes; occasionally the blood rushes to their cheeks so they turn red, at other times they pretend to be looking another way while still watching me out of the corner of their eyes. There I sit observing all this, and nobody suspects that I see through every soul. For several years I have thought I could read the souls of everybody. Maybe it is not so. . . . — Knut Hamsun

No matter how much I kept telling myself that I was behaving like an idiot, it was no use. — Knut Hamsun

A country preacher could not have looked more full of milk and honey than this formidable writer, whose words had always left long bloody marks wherever they fell. — Knut Hamsun

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it. — Knut Hamsun

Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist. — Knut Hamsun

He never read a book but often though about God; it was unavoidable, a matter of simplicity and awe. The starry sky, the soughing of the forest, the solitude, the big snow, the majesty of the earth and what was above the earth filled him with a deep devoutness many times a day. He was sinful and godfearing; on Sundays he washed himself in honour of the holy day but worked as usual. — Knut Hamsun

Love is every bit as violent and dangerous as murder. — Knut Hamsun

The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word ... that by it's trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers ... One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word; one must be able to give one's writing unexpected effects. It must have a hectic, anguished vehemence, so that it rushes past like a gust of air, and it must have a latent, roistering tenderness so that it creeps and steals one's mind; it must be able to ring out like a sea-shanty in a tremendous hour, in the time of the tempest, and it must be able to sigh like one who, in tearful mood, sobs in his inmost heart. — Knut Hamsun

Gladness is intoxicating. I fire my gun and an unforgettable echo answers from crag to crag, floats out over the sea and rings in some sleepless helmsman's ears. What am I glad about? A thought that comes to me, a memory, a sound in the forest, a human being. I think of her - I close my eyes and stand still on the road and think of her, counting the minutes. — Knut Hamsun

A man comes walking north. He carries a sack, the first sack, containing provisions for the road and some implements. The man is strong and rough-hewn, with a red lion beard and little scars on face and hands, sites of old wounds
were they gotten at work or in a fight? Maybe he has been in jail and wants to go into hiding, or perhaps he is a philosopher looking for peace; in any case, here he comes, a human being in the midst of this immense solitude. He walks and walks, in a silence broken by neither bird nor beast. — Knut Hamsun

I would be beholden to no man, not even for a blanket. — Knut Hamsun

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet ... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44) — Knut Hamsun

Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth. — Knut Hamsun

A swarm of tiny noxious animals had bored a way into my inner man and hollowed me out. — Knut Hamsun

Young hearts have their unfathomable depths. — Knut Hamsun

The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life. — Knut Hamsun

This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time. — Knut Hamsun

It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing. — Knut Hamsun

But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent. — Knut Hamsun

Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all. A dull and desolate existence? Nay, least of all. A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition. — Knut Hamsun

What power that girl wielded, though there was nothing striking or unusual about her - unless one considered her long braid and her common sense! — Knut Hamsun

Earth and sea merged, the sea tossed itself in the air in a fantastic dance, into the shapes of men and horses and tattered banners. I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things. — Knut Hamsun

Alas, love turns the human heart into a mildewed garden, a lush and shameless garden in which grow mysterious, obscene toadstools. — Knut Hamsun

No, I don't admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius's activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with. — Knut Hamsun

If I happened to find a diamond one day, I would call it Dagny, because the very sound of your name thrills me. I only wish that I could forever hear your name, hear it spoken by all men and beasts, by every mountain and every star. I wish I were deaf to every sound except your name ringing in my ears day and night for the rest of my life. — Knut Hamsun

It is as well perhaps that this is not the first time I have been swept off my feet. In the days of my blessed youth there were such occasions; in what young person's life do they not occur? — Knut Hamsun

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate. — Knut Hamsun

There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me ... — Knut Hamsun

It is the reign of Autumn, the height of the Carnival of Decay, the roses have got inflammation in their blushes, an uncanny hectic tinge, through their soft damask. I felt myself like a creeping thing on the verge of destruction, gripped by ruin in the midst of a whole world ready for lethargic sleep. — Knut Hamsun

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there. — Knut Hamsun

A maiden was imprisoned in a stone tower. She loved a lord. Why? Ask the wind and the stars, ask the god of life; for no one else knows these things. And the lord was her friend and her lover; but time passed, and one fine day he saw someone else and his heart turned away. As a youth he loved the maiden. Often he called her his bliss and his dove, and her embrace was hot and heaving. He said, Give me your heart! And she did so. He said, May I ask you for something, my love? And she answered, in raptures, Yes. She gave him all, and yet he never thanked her. The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask life's mysterious god; for no one else knows these things. She gave him nothing, no, nothing did she give him, and yet he thanked her. She said, Give me your peace and your sanity. And he only grieved that she didn't ask for his life. And the maiden was put in the tower. . . . — Knut Hamsun

An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness ... a wordless and irrational feeling of ecstasy; or a breath of psychic pain; a sense of being spoken to from afar, from the sky or the sea; an agonizingly developed sense of hearing which can cause one to wince at the murmuring of unseen atoms; an irrational staring into the heart of some closed kingdom suddenly and briefly revealed. — Knut Hamsun

That room was Rolandsen's world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the notice of every visitor. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he had all these medicaments there solely to disguise the aroma of all the brandy he consumed. But this was part of an act designed purely to give himself an air of inscrutability. — Knut Hamsun

God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people's sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with the love of God and everyman ... But the man is old, after all, his fountains of life run dry, without a trace remaining of human affections ... Only someone who has become slow and watertight with old age, satiated and hardened with pleasure, will go to youth and say, Renounce! ... And yet the youth renounces nothing, but sins royally for forty years. Such is the course of nature! — Knut Hamsun

The heavy red roses smoldering in the foggy morning, blood-colored and uninhibited, made me greedy, and tempted me powerfully to steal one
I asked the prices merely so I could come as near them as possible. — Knut Hamsun

They walked away from the sea, Rolandsen in the lead. He kept to the edge of the road, in the snow, to leave room for the others. He was wearing light, fashionable shoes, but seemed unperturbed; he even had his coat unbuttoned in the chilly May wind.
'So that's the church!' said the curate.
'It looks old. I don't suppose there's a stove in it?' asked his wife.
'I couldn't say,' Rolandsen replied, 'but I don't think so. — Knut Hamsun

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work. — Knut Hamsun

I was fading helplessly away with open eyes, staring straight at the ceiling. Finally I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain, some thought in there scrabbling to get out, a stark-staring mad idea: What if I get a bite? And without a moment's hesitation I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together.
I jumped up. I was finally awake. A little blood trickled from my finger, and I licked it off as it came. It didn't hurt, the wound was nothing really, but I was at once brought back to my sense. I shook my head, went over to the window and found a rag for the wound. While I was fiddling with this, my eyes filled with water
I wept softly to myself. The skinny lacerated finger looked so sad. God in heaven, to what extremity I had come! — Knut Hamsun

And here we go creating great men out of artisans who happened to have stumbled on a way to improve electrical apparatus or pedal through Sweden on a bicycle! And we solicit great men to write books promoting the cult of other great men! It's really very funny, and worth the price of admission! It will all end up with every village having his own great man - a lawyer, a novelist, and a polar explorer of immense stature! And the world will become wonderfully flat and simple and easy to master ... — Knut Hamsun

But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe ... — Knut Hamsun

- Is that for me? said he.

- Yes, it's for you.

He took it carefully in his hands, and stroked it.

- Do you think it's nice?

- Nice - why I could go round the world in such. — Knut Hamsun

Do not forget, some give little, and it is much for them, others give all, and it costs them no effort; who then has given most? — Knut Hamsun

Oh, a woman can't tell one man from another; not always - not often. — Knut Hamsun

Yesterday the sea was as smooth as a mirror; it is smooth as a mirror today. The island is having an Indian summer. Such a mild, warm Indian summer! Yet there is no sun. It is years since I knew such peace, perhaps twenty or thirty years; or perhaps it was in a previous life. Whenever it was, I must surely have tasted before now this peace that I feel as I walk around in ecstasies, humming to myself, caring for every stone and every straw, and sensing that they care for me once more. We are friends. As I follow the overgrown path through the forest, my heart trembles with an unearthly joy. — Knut Hamsun

What was the point of spelling out the details? And anyway, wasn't a poor soul allowed to have a little genuine lovesickness to cope with on top of everything else? Without further ado, Rolandsen went up to his office, straight to the instrument, and asked one of the operators at the Rosengaard telegraph station to send him half a cask of cognac at the first opportunity. There was no sense in carrying on like this forever. — Knut Hamsun

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation. — Knut Hamsun

What have you done to your eyes? They're all red. Have you been crying?' 'No,' he answers, laughing, 'but I've been staring into my fairy tales, where the sun is very strong. — Knut Hamsun

What does the world know? Nothing! You simply get used to something, you accept it and acknowledge it, because your teacher has acknowledged it before you; everything is just a supposition - indeed, even time, space, motion, matter are suppositions. The world knows nothing, it merely accepts things ... — Knut Hamsun

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation. — Knut Hamsun

I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye. — Knut Hamsun

I imagined I had discovered a new word. I rise up in bed and say, "It is not in the language; I have discovered it. 'Kuboa.' It has letters as a word has. By the benign God, Man you have discovered a word! ... 'Kuboa' ... a word of profound import.
[ ... ]
Some minutes pass over, and I wax nervous; this new word torments me unceasingly, returns again and again, takes up my thoughts, and makes me serious. I had fully formed an opinion as to what it should not signify, but had come to no conclusion as to what it should signify.
[ ... ]
Then it seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer angrily, "Beg pardon! You match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh. Might I ask why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton, when I had a special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton? — Knut Hamsun

There are some people who cannot help giving. Why? Because they experience a real psychological pleasure in doing so. They don't do it with an eye to their own advantage, they do it on the quiet; they detest doing it openly because that would take away some of the satisfaction. They do it in secret, with quick trembling hands, their breasts rocked by a spiritual well being which they do not themselves understand. — Knut Hamsun

God is forgotten, the mighty dollar has taken his place and the mechanic cannot ease the troubled soul. The road is closed. Under circumstances such as these America only increases speed. America will not stop for anything, it wants to get on, go on, forge a way ahead. Should America turn back? Absolutely not! It simply increases the pace a hundredfold, acts the hurricane and whips life up to a white heat. In Europe nowadays we have the word Americanism, the old days had festina lente. — Knut Hamsun

In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived. — Knut Hamsun