Nesbo Harry Quotes & Sayings

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

[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

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

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

Harry looked at Bellman. He could not help but admire him. The way you admire a cockroach you flush down the toilet and it comes creeping back again and again and in the end it inherits the world. — Jo Nesbo

Perhaps it's just that people, wherever they live on the globe, somehow share the same visions or fantasies. It's in our nature, wired into the hard drive, so to speak. Despite all the differences, sooner or later, we still come up with the same answers. - Harry Hole — 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

Sick is a relative concept. We're all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behavior? No actions are in themselves symptoms of sickness. You have to look at the context within which these actions are performed. — Jo Nesbo

In the supermarket Harry had bought a pizza grandiosa which he heated in the oven. He thought how odd it was to be sitting in Sweden, eating Italian food made in Norway. — Jo Nesbo

How's your girlfriend?'
'Birgitta?' Harry was quiet, 'I don't know. She wont talk to me. Feeling terrible, I hope.'
'Why do you hope she's feeling terrible?'
'I hope she loves me, of course.'
Sandra emitted a rasping laugh. 'And how are you. Harry Holy?'
'Terrible.' Harry smiled sadly — 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

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

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

A tone can't be off-key. A tone isn't off- key until it is set alongside other tones. - Harry Hole — Jo Nesbo

Are you dying?"
Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry. — Jo Nesbo

Incomprehensible, his colleagues tended to say when they discovered young people who had chosen to take their own lives. Harry assumed they said that to protect themselves, to reject the whole idea of it. If not, he didn't understand what they meant by its being incomprehensible. — Jo Nesbo

Wilhelm's smile reminded Harry of his father's sad, resigned smile, the smile of a man looking backwards because that's where the things that made him smile were. — Jo Nesbo

And the rest of the story?" he asked, trying to force a smile. "Is that like everything else in POT, on a need-to-know basis?"
She nodded.
The waiter came to their table, but must have sensed his timing was off and went away again.
She opened her mouth to say something. Harry could see that she was on the verge of tears. She bit her lower lip. Then she put the napkin down on the tablecloth, shoved her chair back, stood up without a word and left. Harry remained, sitting and staring at the napkin. She must have been squeezing it in her hand for some time, he mused, because it was crumpled up into a ball. He watched it slowly unfold like a white paper flower. — Jo Nesbo

Anna took love very seriously. She loved love. No, worshipped, that's the word. She worshipped love. That was the only thing which had any place in her life. That and hatred. Do you know what neutron stars are?'
'They're planets with such compactness and high surface gravity that if I dropped this cigarette on one of them it would strike with the same force as an atom bomb. It was the same with Anna. Her gravitation to love-and hatred-was so strong that nothing could exist in the space between them. Every tiny detail caused an atomic explosion. Do you understand? It took me time to understand. She was like Jupiter-hidden behind an eternal cloud of sulphur. And humour. And sexuality. — Jo Nesbo

Harry could feel his earlobes getting hot. How could this gay clown make him, a fully grown man, so embarrassed that he looked like a Brit after six hours on a Spanish beach? — Jo Nesbo

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

It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters. "The waiters here are like the planet Pluto," Andrew said. "They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye. — Jo Nesbo

Physical pain is not the worst thing a human has to deal with," Altman said. "Believe me, I see it every day. Not death, either. Nor even fear of death." "What is the worst, then?" "Humiliation. To be deprived of honor and dignity. To be disrobed, to be cast out by the flock. That's the worst punishment; it's akin to being buried alive. And the only consolation is that the person will perish fairly quickly." "Mm." Harry kept eye contact with Altman. "You don't have anything in that cupboard to lighten the atmosphere, — 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

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

It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something ... the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe. — Jo Nesbo

Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. — Jo Nesbo

Harry had underrated intuition before, both other people's and his own, and it had been to his cost every time without exception. — Jo Nesbo

In a nutshell, Harry, they're two sides of the same coin. Life becomes a living hell, but the alternative is even worse. Ha — 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

Don't, he thought. Don't let it happen. 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. Harry — Jo Nesbo

Yeah, but I guess sometimes it's easier to take responsibility for the dead instead of the living. The rest of us have to look after them, Harry. The living. After all, that's the responsibility that drives us. — Jo Nesbo

research into why people commit suicide. Do you know what they found the most common cause was?' 'That was the sort of thing I was hoping you could answer.' Harry had to slalom between people on the narrow pavement to keep up with the tubby psychologist. 'That they didn't want to live any longer,' Aune said. 'Sounds like someone deserves a Nobel Prize. — Jo Nesbo

Scientists still know very little about how the olfactory cortex in the brain converts impulses from receptors into conscious senses of smell. But Harry wasn't thinking so much about the hows, he just knew that when he smelled her, all sorts of things started happening in his head and body. Like his eyelids closing halfway, like his mouth spreading into a broad grin and his mood soaring. — Jo Nesbo

Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma? — Jo Nesbo

He went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard. — Jo Nesbo

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

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're prisioners of... things.Of who we are. — Jo Nesbo

The bat is the Aboriginal symbol of death. Did you know that? Harry did not. — Jo Nesbo

The best brothels in Bangkok seem to have a weakness for Greek names,' [Liz] commented acidly and got out. Harry looked up at a large neon sign proclaiming that the motel was called Olympussy. — Jo Nesbo

case in California about a senator who - ' Harry — Jo Nesbo

There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,' Harry recounted.
'He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted "buttfucker" then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I've always wondered why I hated him so much.'
'People are afraid of what they don't understand. And hate what they're afraid of. — Jo Nesbo

Well, Espen, you're no drug addict, so why do you beg?"
"Because it's my mission to be mirror for mankind so that they can see which actions are great and which are small."
"And which are great?"
Espen sighed in despair, as though weary of repeating the obvious. "Charity. Sharing and helping your neighbor. The Bible deals with nothing else. In fact, you have to search extremely hard to find anything about sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, or a woman's right to speak in public. But, of course, it is easier for Pharisees to talk aloud about subordinate clauses than to describe and perform the great actions the Bible leaves us in no doubt about: You have to give half of what you own to someone who has nothing. Thousands of people are dying every day without hearing the words of God because these Christians will not let go of their earthly goods. I'm giving them a chance to reflect. — Jo Nesbo