Swede Quotes & Sayings

I own one movie by fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, because I have to. You can't be a movie critic with a collection of six or seven hundred DVDs that includes everything from 'Tokyo Story' to 'Poison Ivy: The New Seduction' and not have a Bergman movie. — Steve Erickson

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. — F Scott Fitzgerald

That's my Middle West-not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Don't be too sure,' he continued. The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps. — Joseph Conrad

We appealed to the conscience of the world. The world has no conscience. We have no one but ourselves.
The fight. The struggle. The historic destiny. The return of the people. The cause: life therefore having a meaning and shape that eludes the rest of us in the endless wash of 'What the hell are we doing here?' In a single day, says an Israeli friend, he experiences events and emotions that would keep a Swede going for a year. — David Hare

(On Baron von Blixen
Six feet of amiable Swede and, to my knowledge, the toughest, most durable White Hunter ever to snicker at the fanfare of safari or to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink will be gin or whisky. — Beryl Markham

Movies give me an opportunity to go places. I'm not only a Swede but an American, not just a man of my time, but I've been living 2,000 years ago-and not just in a new country, America, but in the Holy Land, too. — Max Von Sydow

That people were manifold creatures didn't come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. It was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn't wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self, the true self, who was a wholly deluded fuckup. It was as though being in tune with life was an accident that might sometimes befall the fortunate young but was otherwise something for which human beings lacked any real affinity. — Philip Roth

Cases of champagne and scotch lay broken in the street, and everyone I saw had a bottle. They were screaming and dancing, and in the middle of the crowd a giant Swede wearing a blue jockstrap was blowing long blasts on a trumpet. — Hunter S. Thompson

I have to get used to it - to her, but she's put a light in him so I think I'm going to be a fan."
"You're a stand-up gal, Swede."
"If she screws him up, I'll peel the skin off her ass with a dull razor blade. — Nora Roberts

Never try to out-drink a Swede, unless you happen to be a Finn or at least a Russian. — Jonas Jonasson

The underwear bomber was so incredibly nervous that he decided to wear the bomb three weeks before his mission, and that's how he ruined it. He was willing, and he tried to kill a plane full of people - but what he actually did was burn his crotch off. There happened to be a Swedish documentary filmmaker several seats over. When he saw the fire and the bomber fiddling with his explosive, the Swede hopped over seats from the other side of the plane and beat the crap out of him. Other passengers joined in. — Gary J. Byrne

Before reaching Grassy Butte, though, Dad spied a farmhouse with two pumps in the drive and a red-and-white sign out front saying DALE'S OIL COMPANY. Another sign said CLOSED, but a light was on in the house and Dad pulled in, saying, "I believe we might prevail on Dale. What do you think?"
"Prevail on Dale," I repeated to Swede.
"To make a sale," she added.
"And if we fail, we'll whale on Dale
"
"Till he needs braille!"
"Will you guys desist?" Dad asked. — Leif Enger

Once torched by truth, Swede wrote years later, a little thing like faith is easy. — Leif Enger

And the line up for the final of the women's 400 metres hurdles includes three Russians, two East Germans, a Pole, a Swede and a Frenchman — David Coleman

The barber's assistant asks if I am a Swede. An American? Not that either. A Russian? Well, then, what are you? I love to answer such nationalistically tinted questions with a steely silence, and to leave people who ask me about my patriotic feelings in the dark. Or I tell lies and say that I'm Danish. Some kinds of frankness are only hurtful and boring. — Robert Walser

It came as no surprise to learn of the success the Swede has recently enjoyed with his furniture. In that rotten state of his the Swede is permanently on the lookout for firewood, so it is no wonder that from time to time this might result in the odd table or chair. — Timur Vermes

His face lit up. "I've always wanted to fuck a Swede. — Marita A. Hansen

Black-Jewish Alliance, What Went Wrong?, Murray Friedman explains how the Civil Rights Movement was Jewish. First of all, it was based on what Friedman calls "Jewish science." The Civil Rights Movement was based on a book by the name of An American Dilemma, purportedly written by a Swede by the name of Gunnar Myrdal. As Murray Friedman hints, Myrdal did not and could not have written An American Dilemma. — E. Michael Jones

And also a lot of Muslims are no more religious then the average Swede. For them it's natural that human rights come first. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

No, he wasn't a Jain, thought the Swede, but he might as well have been - he was just as pathetically and naively nonviolent. The idiocy of the uprightness of the goals he had set. — Philip Roth

My friends who are not from Sweden tell me that I'm more reserved or maybe more ... I guess the opposite of what a Latin American would be. Maybe because Scandinavians are more careful with their words and I guess it takes a lot to become a friend of a Swede. — Robyn

What a glorious new Scandinavia might not Minnesota become! Here the Swede would find again his clear, romantic lakes, the plains of Scane rich in corn, and the valleys of Norrland; here the Norwegian would find his rapid rivers ... The climate, the situation, the character of the scenery agrees with our people better than that of any other American States ... — Fredrika Bremer

England are very light up front. Eriksson's decision not to include Jermaine Defoe can be declared an error of judgment, regardless of Rooney's situation. The Swede should have forgone one of his nine midfield players; much will have to go wrong for Jermaine Jenas to get a game. — Matt Dickinson

I am so 100 percent Swedish ... Someone has said a Swede is like a bottle of ketchup - nothing and nothing and then all at once - splat. I think I'm a little like that. — Ingmar Bergman

My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped. — Ruth Rendell

Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy. — Roland Huntford

He was undoubtedly intelligent and well informed, but too right-wing for Grane's tastes. It was rare to find a well-educated Swede who was also a wholehearted supporter of the American Republican Party - he even expressed some sympathy for the Tea Party movement. — David Lagercrantz

It's difficult to get to know a Swede. But once you do, you're in. — Alexander Skarsgard

I'll never forget my first experience of swede. It was at school and I thought I was getting mashed potato. I've never got over it. — Paul Merton

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed
though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will. — Leif Enger

My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc. — Kresley Cole