Norwegian - Author | December 6, 1968 -
Those small things, like giving a hug to man, I try to avoid it. Because I can see the situation is coming, and I try to prepare. But I remember the first time I did it, I was 16, and I was at the gymnasium, and it was a cosmopolitan thing, an international thing, a modern thing, but I never felt at ease with it at all.
Karl Ove Knausgaard
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I don't know why people do not read 'Mein Kampf' more regularly. It tells you first-hand about all the narcissism; you see that collapse in German culture. There is no chance that anyone could become a Nazi by reading that book.
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I do think readers should respect my privacy, but I don't get angry when I get personal questions, because I understand why.
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Having a writer in the family is a curse - for the family. I do feel more or less guilty when I'm writing.
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When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.
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In my experience, when you're writing, you want the truth, and you don't want to be apologetic in any way. But there is something in writing, the complexity of it, that works against that aim.
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When I started out on 'Min Kamp', I was so extremely frustrated over my life and my writing. I wanted to write something majestic and grand, something like 'Hamlet' or 'Moby Dick,' but found myself with this small life - looking after kids, changing diapers, quarreling with my wife, unable to write anything, really.
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When you use the form of a novel, and you say 'I,' you are also saying 'I' for someone else. When you say 'you,' you are simultaneously in your room writing and in the outside world - you are seeing and being seen seeing, and this creates something slightly strange and foreign in the self.
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In 'Min Kamp,' I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read.
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In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out.
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When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.
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I spent six years after my first novel and five years after my second without getting into a new book.
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