The Devil's Star

To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

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.

Most of the water, however, did not run into the wall, but down it, because water, like cowardice and lust, always finds the lowest level.

...stereotypes were self-reinforcing because unconsciously you were looking for things to confirm them. That was why policemen thought – based on so-called experience – that all criminals were stupid, and criminals thought the same about all policemen.

[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.

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.

...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.

It isn’t a paradox, darling. I just expressed it in that way to sound like one. Everything can be formulated as a paradox. It isn’t difficult. It’s just that true paradoxes don’t exist. True paradoxes, ha, ha. Do you see how easy it is? It’s just words, the lack of precision in language. I have finished with words.

Jim Beam is made with rye, barley and a while 75 per cent of maize which gives bourbon the sweet, round taste that marks it out from straight whisky. The water in Jim Beam comes from a source near the distillery in Clermont, Kentucky, where they also make the special yeast that some people maintain is taken from the same recipe Jacob Bean used in 1795.

She was what most people would call dead.

It’s strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself.

The sitting room shows how you want to present yourself. But in the kitchen everyone relaxes more. It's like you're allowed to be yourself. Did you notice that we relaxed with each other as soon as we came in? - Olaug Siversten

Unfortunately we live in a country that is so rich at the moment that the politicians compete with each other to be the most open-handed. We've become so soft and nice that no-one dares to take the responsibility for doing unpleasant things any more. - Tom Waaler

Man's ability to think rationally when self-interest was at stake was inversely proportional to intelligence. - Aune

People are much more used to hearing lies than the truth. - Wilhelm Barli

Good tragedies always have a little humour. - Wilhelm Barli

Whose hart is more crippled, the heart that cannot stop loving or the one that is loved by cannot return that love? - Wilhelm Barli

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.

The Stones are not the world’s greatest band. Not even the world’s second greatest band. What they are is the world’s most overrated band. And it wasn’t Keith or Mick who wrote “Wild Horses”. It was Gram Parsons.

Belle Gunness who was that rare thing: a female serial killer. She left for America and married a weed of a man in 1902 and settled down on a farm outside La Porte in the state of Indiana.

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.

It’s what we call a mare cross, or a devil’s star.’ ‘A mare cross?’ ‘A pagan symbol. They used to carve it over beds or doorways to keep away the mare.’ ‘The mare?

Norwegians were not exactly what you might call a cultured people - Nikolai Loeb

At least until you land.’ ‘I’ve come to realise that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being.

According to the alcoholic’s basic law of life – The Big Thirst – everything that was good, everything, would be lost sooner or later. That was how he had viewed the equation until he met Rakel

Building cathedrals is a calling. In Italy they gave masons who died during the construction of a church the status of a martyr. Even though cathedral builders built for humanity there isn't a single cathedral in human history that was not founded on human bones and human blood. - Tom Waaler

Lavonas atrodydavo kaip tuščias vabzdžio kiautas voratinklyje - esybė būdavo išnykusi, šviesa išnykusi, nelikę to iliuzinio švytėjimo, kurį skleidžia kadai užgesusios žvaigždės. Kūnas būdavo netekęs sielos. Ir būtent sielos nebuvimas įkvėpė Harį tikėti.

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