Peter Høeg Quotes - Page 2

I don't fall in love anymore. Just like I don't get the mumps.

Grief is a gift, something you have to earn.

Never do I close my door behind me without being conscious that I am carrying out an act of charity towards myself.

When we say 'time', I believe we mean at least two things. We mean changes. And we mean something unchangeable. We mean something that moves . but against an unmoving background. And vice versa.Animals can sense changes. But consciousness of time involves the double sense of constancy and change. Which can only be attributed to those who give expression to it. And that can only be done through language, and only man has language.The perception of time and language are inextricably bound up with one another.

I'm not crying about anything or anyone in particular. The life I live I created for myself, and I wouldn't want it any different. I cry because in the universe there is something as beautiful as Kremer playing the Brains violin concerto.

We think there are limits to the dimensions of fear. Until we encounter the unknown. Then we can all feel boundless amounts of terror.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

I'm no expert on types of cars. As far as i'm concerned, you could send all the cars in the world through a compactor and shoot them out into the stratosphere and put them in orbit around Mars. Except, of course, the taxis that have to be at my disposal when I need them.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.

There's a look of mischief in his eyes. 'Smilla. Why is it that such an elegant and petite girl like you has such a rough voice.' I'm sorry,' I say, 'if I give you the impression that it is only my mouth that's rough. I do my best to be rough all over.

Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease.

It may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.

Under certain circumstances the fateful decisions in life, sometimes even in matters of life and death, are made with an almost indifferent ease. While the little things-for instance, the way people hang on to what is over-seem so important.

Those who were on the inside, the majority that is, for them it had been hard to get his point, mostly they were just pleased that they were on the inside, that they were the fittest. For those on the outside, the fear and abandonment amounts to almost everything; everybody knows that. Understanding is something one does best when one is on the borderline.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups. There's something euphorically invigorating and yet filling about it. It tastes the way I imagine the Far East must taste.

People under thirty haven't yet stopped believing that something wonderful can suddenly happen.

Some thoughts have glue on them.----Smilla

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

Love has something to do with recognition, We can be fascinated by the unknown, we can be attracted by it, but love is something that grows, slowly, in an atmosphere of trust.