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I Is Another: Septology III-V

by Jon Fosse · 2020

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in… more

5 quotes ★ 4.42 (3,302) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

...I just keep the mistakes and let them be wrong, because it’s often the mistakes that eventually lead to something right...
13
...everyone has a deep longing inside them, we always always long for something and we believe that what we long for is this or that, this person or that person, this thing or that thing, but actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer, a person is a prayer through his or her longing...
8
...one of the most important things when it comes to painting is being able to stop at the right time, to know when a picture is saying what it can say, if you keep going too long then more often than not the picture’ll be ruined...
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...a person comes from God and goes back to God, I think, for the body is conceived and born, it grows and declines, it dies and vanishes, but the spirit is a unity of body and soul, the way form and content are an invisible unity in a good picture...
2
it's almost like a language, because every language gives you access to its share of reality
1

About Jon Fosse

We have collected 24 quotes from 4 books by Jon Fosse on BookQuoters.

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About the book

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this second instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, ‘a major work of Scandinavian fiction’ (Hari Kunzru), the two Asles meet for the first time in their youth. They look strangely alike, dress identically, and both want to be painters. At art school in Bjørgvin, Asle meets and falls in love with his future wife, Ales. Written in melodious and hypnotic ‘slow prose’, I Is Another: Septology III-V is an exquisite metaphysical novel about love, art, God, f

Book details

First published
2020
Author
Jon Fosse
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
4.42 (3k ratings)

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