Quotes from Headhunters

Jo Nesbø ·  265 pages

Rating: (24.1K votes)


“When I propose a candidate for a job I don't do it because the person in question is the best but because he is the one the client will employ. I provide them with a head that is good enough, placed on a body they want. [...] The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters


“An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters


“They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters


“most likely because the majority of the receptionists have gone home, to a sick partner according to statistics, in the country with the shortest working hours in the world, the biggest health budget and the highest proportion of sick leave.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters


“that it was impossible to get rid of it without”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters



“We all drink according to how thirsty we are’.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from Headhunters


About the author

Jo Nesbø
Born place: in Oslo, Norway
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“He pauses. “Maybe that letter was left for you.”

“No, she was pretty pissed that I wrote back.”

Now he hesitates. “I don’t mean that she left the letter for you.”

It takes me a second to figure out his tone. “Rev, if you start preaching at me, I’m going in the house.”

“I’m not preaching.”

No, he’s not. Yet.

He still has that old Bible I found him clutching in my closet. It was his mother’s. He’s read it about twenty times. He’ll debate theology with anyone who’s interested—and I’m not on that list. Geoff and Kristin used to take him to church, but he said he didn’t like that he couldn’t live by his own interpretation.

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