“Many people believe that right and wrong are fixed absolutes. That is incorrect, they change over time. The job of the historian is primarily to find the historical truth, to look at what the sources say and present them, objectively and dispassionately. If historians were to stand in judgment on human folly, our work would seem to posterity like fossils – the remnants of the orthodoxy of their time.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“And the rest of the story?" he asked, trying to force a smile. "Is that like everything else in POT, on a need-to-know basis?"
She nodded.
The waiter came to their table, but must have sensed his timing was off and went away again.
She opened her mouth to say something. Harry could see that she was on the verge of tears. She bit her lower lip. Then she put the napkin down on the tablecloth, shoved her chair back, stood up without a word and left. Harry remained, sitting and staring at the napkin. She must have been squeezing it in her hand for some time, he mused, because it was crumpled up into a ball. He watched it slowly unfold like a white paper flower.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“I’m working on a large project which I hope will become a book. A war book.’ ‘Hasn’t someone already written that one?”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“In the supermarket Harry had bought a pizza grandiosa which he heated in the oven. He thought how odd it was to be sitting in Sweden, eating Italian food made in Norway.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“No person or events mentioned in this book should be confused with real persons or events. Reality is far to strange for that.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“A tone can't be off-key. A tone isn't off- key until it is set alongside other tones. - Harry Hole”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“He looked as if he was trying to set a new world record in being bored.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“And a soft spot for the somewhat anguished officer with big ears that stuck out from the close-cropped cranium like two colourful butterfly wings. Even though Harry had caused Møller more trouble than was good for him. As a newly promoted PAS he had learned that the first commandment for a civil servant with career plans was to guard your back.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Doneslo se mi, že pořád chodíte ke Schrøderům, Harry." "Míň něž jindy, šéfe. V televizi dávají spoustu zajímavých pořadů." "Ale vysedáváte tam?" "Nevidí tam rádi, když člověk stojí." "Nechte toho. Začal jste zase pít?" "Minimálně." "Jak minimálně?" "Kdybych pil míň, vyhodili by mě.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Why did you move home from the US?’ Daniel asked. ‘Wall Street Crash. My father lost his job at the shipyard.’ ‘There you are,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s capitalism for you. The small guys slog away while the rich get fatter whether it’s boom time or a slump.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“The prosecutor nodded to the usher, who opened the door at the back of the room. There was a scraping of chairs outside, the door opened wide and a large man strolled in. Krohn noted that the man was wearing a suit jacket which was slightly too small, black jeans and large Dr Martens boots. The close-shaven head and the slim athletic body suggested an age somewhere around the early thirties – although the bloodshot eyes with bags underneath and the pale complexion with thin capillaries bursting sporadically into small red deltas pointed more in the region of fifty. ‘Police Officer Harry Hole?’ the judge asked when the man had taken a seat in the witness box.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“What are your friends like anyway?’ Aune checked his bow-tie to make sure it was straight. ‘They’re like you,’ he said. ‘But my wife knows a few respectable people.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“On page six his eyes fell on a large photograph of a wooden road sign with a sun cross painted on. Oslo 2,611 km, it said on one arm, Leningrad 5 km on the other. The article beneath was credited to Even”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Oh, yes, they’re still angry. At Third World aid, cuts in the defence budget, women priests, marriages for homosexuals, our new countrymen, all the things you would guess would upset these old boys. In their hearts they’re still fascists.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Epigraph But little by little he gained courage, flew close to him, and drew with his little bill a thorn that had become embedded in the brow of the Crucified One. And as he did this there fell on his breast a drop of blood from the face of the Crucified One – it spread quickly and floated out and coloured all the little fine breast feathers. Then the Crucified One opened his lips and whispered to the bird: ‘Because of thy compassion, thou hast won all that thy kind have been striving after, ever since the world was created.’ Selma Lagerlöf, Robin Redbreast, Christ Legends”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women. It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“You’ve got body armour on, haven’t you?’ Harry twisted round to check. ‘Have you or haven’t you?’ She tapped her chest with her knuckles by way of reply. ‘Lightweight?’ She nodded. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ellen! I gave the order for ballistic vests to be worn. Not those Mickey Mouse vests.’ ‘Do you know what the Secret Service guys use?’ ‘Let me guess. Lightweight vests?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Do you know what I don’t give a shit about?’ ‘Let me guess. The Secret Service?’ ‘That’s right.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“then two identical Cadillac Fleetwoods (special Secret Service cars flown in from the US) and the President sitting in one of them. Which one was kept secret. Or perhaps he was sitting in both, Harry thought. One for Jekyll and one for Hyde.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Politiets overvåkningstjeneste, or POT, the Security Service,”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Using the acronym PAS – the internal abbreviation for Politiavdelingssjef, the head of Crime Squad – particularly pleased him. Brandhaug sat down, winked at his old friend Kurt Meirik, the head of Politiets overvåkningstjeneste, or POT, the Security Service, and studied the others sitting round the table.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“A horse perceives eye contact as provocative, as if it and its status in the herd are not being respected. If it cannot avoid eye contact, it will react in a different way, by rebelling for example. In dressage you don’t get anywhere by not showing respect, however superior your species might be. Any animal trainer can tell you that. In the mountains in Argentina there’s a wild horse which will jump off the nearest precipice if any human tries to ride it.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“This man, commenting on the attack at Dennis Kebab, says we need more racists like Sverre Olsen to regain control of Norway. In the interview the word “racist” is used as a term of respect. Does the accused consider himself a “racist”?”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“The monitoring expert they had used in Sydney had explained to Harry that at low volumes the human ear amplifies the frequencies human voices use. Harry thought there was something comforting about the fact that the last thing you heard before everything went quiet was the human voice.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“Mnogi misle da su dobro i lose apsolutne vrednosti.No, nije bas tako, te vrednosti se vremenom menjaju.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“74 Rikshospital. 10 May 2000. HARRY RECOGNISED BERNT BRANDHAUG AT ONCE. HE HAD a broad smile on his face and was staring at Harry with wide-open eyes. ‘Why’s he smiling?’ Harry asked. ‘Don’t ask me,’ Klemetsen said. ‘The facial muscles go stiff and people have all sorts of weird expressions. Now and then we have parents here who can’t recognise their own children because they’ve changed so much.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another from the bottle of whisky room service had brought up: Jameson. The only good thing ever to come out of Ireland.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“The statistical probability of being murdered in Norway was about one in ten thousand. When”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“It’s a calculated risk, you see. You’re either laughing all over your face or you’re in deep, deep shit. Whether to take the risk or not. If you take the gamble, you may fall off the twig frozen stiff one night and not thaw out till spring. Bottle it and you might not have anywhere to nest when you return. These are, as it were, the eternal dilemmas you’re confronted with.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
Jo Nesbø
Born place: in Oslo, Norway
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“He imagined the gazelles raising the dry dust
Like soft brush floating on the crests of sand.”
― quote from The Epic of Gilgamesh
“We meet the people we’re supposed to when the time is just right.”
― Alyson Noel, quote from Shadowland
“On the village green an inclined strong, down which, clinging the while to a pulley-swung handle, one could be hurled violently against a sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the adolescent, as also did the swings and the cocoanut shies.”
― H.G. Wells, quote from The Invisible Man
“Maybe we can't predict everything, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It's almost certainly going to be a disaster”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything
“When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running towards is an illusion.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, quote from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
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