“To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“...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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“[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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“...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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Protože voda, zbabělost a chtíč si vždy hledají nejnižší bod.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“She was what most people would call dead.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Man's ability to think rationally when self-interest was at stake was inversely proportional to intelligence. - Aune”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Loneliness makes us men weak. - Wilhelm Barli”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“People are much more used to hearing lies than the truth. - Wilhelm Barli”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Good tragedies always have a little humour. - Wilhelm Barli”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Whose hart is more crippled, the heart that cannot stop loving or the one that is loved by cannot return that love? - Wilhelm Barli”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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 Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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?”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Norwegians were not exactly what you might call a cultured people - Nikolai Loeb”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“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.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
“Harry had underrated intuition before, both other people’s and his own, and it had been to his cost every time without exception.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Devil's Star
Jo Nesbø
Born place: in Oslo, Norway
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“Esther.” He nuzzled her crown. “I find I am fully recovered.” “This is amazing,” his wife replied, “as you have neither a medical degree nor powers of divination.” “True.” He nuzzled her again. “But two things are restored to me that indicate my health is once again sound.” “And these would be?” the duchess inquired as she watched Westhaven take a polite leave of Miss James. The duke frowned at his son’s retreating back. “The first is a nigh insatiable urge to meddle in that boy’s affairs. Devlin and Valentine dragooned me into a shared tea pot, and for once, we three are in agreement over something.” “It’s about time.” “You don’t mind if I take a small hand in things?” the duke asked warily. “I am ready to throttle them both.” The duchess sighed, leaning into her husband. “And I suspect the girl is breeding and doesn’t even know it.” “St. Just is of like mind. He and Val all but asked me what I intend to do about it.” “You will think of something. I have every faith in you, Percy.” “Good to know.” “What was the second piece of evidence confirming your restored health?” “Come upstairs with me, my love, and I will explain it to you in detail.”
― Grace Burrowes, quote from The Heir
“Some nights looking at him scares me so bad I can hardly move and I start doing a prayer for protection. But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?”
― Lynda Barry, quote from Cruddy
“One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history’s first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Android's Dream
“In the old days we were concerned with mobs, with thousands of men running amuck in the streets. The mob has conquered completely. When the mob has grown so vast that you cannot see it, then it is everywhere.”
― Richard Wright, quote from The Outsider
“Belief made no difference to the truth.”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry
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