Stig Dagerman Quotes & Sayings

Life expects of you duties which appear repugnant to you. You must now know that the most important thing is not duties but what permits you to be someone good and just. There are many who will say to you that this is a piece of asocial advice, but you only have to reply to them: When the forms of society are so hard and hostile to life, it is more important to be asocial than inhuman — Stig Dagerman

I received in inheritance neither god nor a given spot on earth from where I can draw the attention of a god: no one either legated me the well disguised fury of the skeptic, the Sioux guiles of the rationalist or the burning innocence of the atheist. So I dare not throw the stone neither at the one who believes in things which inspire me only doubt, nor at the one who cultivates his doubt as if it was not, just as well, surrounded with darkness. This stone would hit me myself because I am well certain about one thing: the need of consolation that dwells within the human being is impossible to satisfy. — Stig Dagerman

Journalism is the art of coming too late as early as possible. I'll never master that. — Stig Dagerman

How is it possible on the one hand, for example, to behave as if nothing on earth were more important than literature, and on the other fail to see that wherever one looks, people are struggling against hunger and will necessarily consider that the most important thing is what they earn at the end of the month? Because this is where he (the writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted was to write for those who are hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence. — Stig Dagerman

But then comes a time when forgetting isn't possible. And I do mean a particular time when no amount of dreaming, not then and maybe not ever, can change how naked and unimportant we become in our own eyes. — Stig Dagerman

When she enters the room she immediately shuts the window and draws the shade with a quick, hard pull. Then she throws herself down on the bed, and the sobbing starts all over again. It's as if she can't sob when she's not in a lying position - either that or she has to start sobbing the moment she lies down. — Stig Dagerman