Loe Quotes & Sayings

Everything seemed meaningless to me. All of a sudden. My own life, the lives of others, of animals of plants, the whole world. It no longer fitted together. — Erlend Loe

When the universe is ephemeral, one can easily feel that human existence is meaningless. Why should I do anything at all?
On the other hand it is tempting to try and make the best of it. I'm here, anyway. The imagination won't cope if I try to picture where I'd otherwise be. — Erlend Loe

Any ideas I might have had about eternal life are sort of getting stuck in the throat. But it doesn't seem to bother me. Not now. On the contrary, I feel more alive than in a long while. Suddenly it feels good to have a deadline to relate to. As a matter of fact, I've always worked well under pressure. — Erlend Loe

The whiles some one did chaunt this louely lay;
Ah see, who so faire thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day;
Ah see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with bashfull modestee,
That fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may;
Lo see soone after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Loe see soone after, how she fades, and falles away.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre,
Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre:
Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest louing thou mayst loued be with equall crime. — Edmund Spenser

It's dark and it's cold and I stoke the fire like a madman to keep warm. One — Erlend Loe

Rome, yes, I say, thinking in quick succession of the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the cardinals screwing around while wondering whether women have souls or not, and of Nero, of course, who killed his closest family and let the city burn. I don't reckon he liked people, either. — Erlend Loe

Everything which is human is alien to me. — Erlend Loe

I sat there thinking this had to be the pits. I was afraid that I had become fed up with life, that I would never ever feel enthusiasm again. — Erlend Loe

I know a helluva lot.
I'm not the only one who knows these things.
Many people know more than I do. That's fortunately not my problem.
My problem is what I am supposed to use it for.
What do I do with it?
It's confusing. — Erlend Loe

We shall never meet, but there is something I want you to know. My time is not the same as your time. Our times are not the same. And do you know what that means? That means that time does not exist. Do you want me to repeat that? There is no time. There is a life and a death. There are people and animals. Our thoughts exist. And the world. The universe, too. But there is no time. You might as well take it easy. Do you feel better now? I feel better. This is going to work out. Have a nice day. — Erlend Loe

I still don't know if things fit together, or if everything will be all right in the end. But I believe that something means something. I believe in cleansing the soul through fun and games. I also believe in love. And I have several good friends, and just one bad one. — Erlend Loe

I don't want all that much. But I want to be fine. I want to live a simple life with many good moments and a lot of fun. — Erlend Loe

There are too many confusing things present. Things I know. Thoughts I have. Sarcasm. Things I think I ought to be doing and places I ought to be going. Always other places. — Erlend Loe

I'm saying it's strange when you meet someone. That it's a new planet. — Erlend Loe

I don't think I am any different from other people. I have the same dreams. I want a family. I want a house. A car. Why shouldn't I want that? Everybody does. And when I have it, I want it all to work. — Erlend Loe

What's hectic about all this is the thought that I haven't asked to be here. I am just here. So is everybody else. We are all here. But we haven't asked to be. It's not our fault. — Erlend Loe

We're born alone and we die alone. It's just a question of getting used to both of them. — Erlend Loe

It's good for me to see so many other people who are not me. That there are so many others. I feel affection for them. Most of them are doing the best they can. I am also doing the best I can. — Erlend Loe

The total number of galaxies in the universe seems to be in the region of ten billion, and that each of them has about a hundred billion stars the size of the sun. These numbers are so absurd that I strangely find myself in a good mood. It's all so immense. I think Paul feels a bit like this as well. There is so little I can do to make a difference. It is liberating. — Erlend Loe

I think I'm more concerned with things that are very big and things that are very small than with all the stuff in between. — Erlend Loe

I have the strangest thoughts in my head, maybe I should not write them down. — Erlend Loe

One problem with people is that as soon as they fill a space it's them you see and not the space. Large, desolate landscapes stop being large, desolate landscapes once they have people in them. They define what the eye sees. And the human eye is almost always directed at other humans. In this way an illusion is created that humans are more important than those things on earth which are not human. It's a sick illusion. — Erlend Loe

It was so nice and uncomplicated. When I wasn't sleeping I ran around and was excited. I never walked. I ran. — Erlend Loe

I feel I am on a high. For the first time in a very long while I have a feeling that anything can happen. This morning I woke up thinking everything could happen, that things would just come to me, and that they would be good. — Erlend Loe

... I don't wish to meet people. They disgust me. Increasingly so. But I must have milk. — Erlend Loe

What I could really use is an older man. A mentor. One who could tell me how things fit together.
He would have asked me to do chores that I felt were meaningless. I would have been impatient and protested, but done them nonetheless. And eventually, after several months of hard labour, I would have realised that there was a deeper meaning behind it all, and that the master had a cunning plan all the time. — Erlend Loe

He just rubs people up the wrong way in a short space of time and, after he'd gone, one of the South African coaches there said to me in a thick Bok accent 'You see, Richard, what we have to put up with?' — Richard Loe

Something is going to have to happen. Not necessarily something big. Just something. — Erlend Loe

A human being weighing 70 kilograms contains among other things:
-45 litres of water
-Enough chalk to whiten a chicken pen
-Enough phosphorus for 2,200 matches
-Enough fat to make approximately 70 bars of soap
-Enough iron to make a two inch nail
-Enough carbon for 9,000 pencil points
-A spoonful of magnesium
I weigh more than 70 kilograms.
And I remember a TV series called Cosmos. Carl Sagan would walk around on a set that was meant to look like space, speaking in large numbers. On one of the shows he sat in front of a tank full of all the substances human beings are made of. He stirred the tank with a stick wondering if he would be able to create life.
He didn't succeed.
— Erlend Loe

But I would rather have snow. Snow is the on.y weather I really like. Nothing makes me less grumpy than snow. I can sit by a window for hours watching it fall. The silence of snowfall. You can use that. It's best when there's background lighting, for example a street lamp. Or when you go outside and let it flutter down on you. That's real riches, that is. — Erlend Loe

Why target two and a half million innocent newborns and children?" Barbara Loe Fisher asks of the hep B vaccine. The implication behind the word innocent is that only those who are not innocent need protection from disease. All of us who grew up during the AIDS epidemic were exposed to the idea that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, promiscuity, and addiction. But if disease is a punishment for anything, it is only a punishment for being alive. When I was a child, I asked my father what causes cancer and he paused for a long moment before saying, "Life. Life causes cancer." I took this as an artful dodge until I read Siddhartha Mukherjee's history of cancer, in which he argues not only that life causes cancer but that cancer is us. "Down to their innate molecular core," Mukherjee writes, "cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves." And this, he notes, "is not a metaphor. — Eula Biss

I have enough trouble with useful information, never mind being burdened with what is useless. — Erlend Loe

The only thing I can be sure of at any given time is what I am thinking myself. I have no idea what the others are thinking. Do they think space is big and dangerous? I do. What do they believe in? I think nobody ought to be alone. That one should be with someone. With friends. With the person one loves. I think it is important to love. I think it's the most important thing. — Erlend Loe

I feel alone, I've always felt alone and I push everyone away because I'm a prat like everyone else, and no one knows me and I fear no on one will ever know men for as long as I live, and I give up and in the end I just shout shit, shit, shit until I lose my voice. — Erlend Loe

The only question that really counts, must be thins one: are things getting better or are they getting worse? — Erlend Loe

I had been wading up to my neck in all this niceness for years. I woke up to it, went to sleep in it. I breathed niceness and slowly it was killing me. — Erlend Loe

Elevators are brilliant. I'm going to stand here a little longer. The good thing about riding in an elevator as a grown-up is that nobody questions my being in the elevator. Nobody suspects me of just riding the elevator. I look like I'm one of the others. — Erlend Loe