The collection / 35 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1988 AD

When my mother didn't come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left. You can demand something like this of yourself as an unattainable ideal. After that, you have to remind yourself about it every time you're sloppy about something. For me that means 250 times a day.

Peter Høeg / quote

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02c. 1988 AD

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.

Peter Høeg / quote

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03c. 1988 AD

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.

Peter Høeg / quote

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04c. 1988 AD

Back then I could not understand one word of what I read.Reading did, however, give me heart. Even if you cannot understand what you are reading you can get something from books.

Peter Høeg / quote

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05c. 1988 AD

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

Peter Høeg / quote

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06c. 1988 AD

The fear for oneself, that one can do something about. Upon it one can turn the light of awareness. But when one is no longer worrying about oneself, then the fear comes for other people and, after that, for the world.There are no fearless people, only fearless moments.

Peter Høeg / quote

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07c. 1988 AD

On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.

Peter Høeg / quote

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08c. 1988 AD

When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

Peter Høeg / quote

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09c. 1988 AD

He has a light, fumbling brutality, which several times makes me think that this time it’ll cost me my sanity. In our dawning, mutual intimacy, I induce him to open the little slit in the head of his penis so I can put my clitoris inside and fuck him.

Peter Høeg / quote

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10c. 1988 AD

A child who is born is something to seek out, something to search for, a star, a northern light, a column of energy in the universe. And a child who dies-that's an abomination.

Peter Høeg / quote

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11c. 1988 AD

It's these small differences in people's karma that determine if we get up or remain lying on the ground.

Peter Høeg / quote

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12c. 1988 AD

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

Peter Høeg / quote

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13c. 1988 AD

Around a child, people come and go, objects appear and are taken away, surroundings take shape and disintegrate. And no explanation is given, because how can you explain the world to a child?So she had used the words. Words call forth and secure that which has gone away. With her lists she had ensured that whatever she had once known would come back

Peter Høeg / quote

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14c. 1988 AD

If you have to wait for a long time, you have to seize hold of the waiting or it will become destructive. If you let things slide, your consciousness will waver, awakening fear and restlessness, then depression strikes, and you're pulled down.

Peter Høeg / quote

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15c. 1988 AD

With age I have voluntarily chosen certain limitations. I don't have the energy to start over again. To learn new skills or fight my own personality or figure out diesel engines.

Peter Høeg / quote

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16c. 1988 AD

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.

Peter Høeg / quote

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17c. 1988 AD

To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.

Peter Høeg / quote

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18c. 1988 AD

No person can open another person, All we can do is wait. And then work with the openness when it occur.s.

Peter Høeg / quote

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19c. 1988 AD

Basker possesses three kinds of bite: a snap, a nip, and then something like a buzz saw and an angle grinder mounted on a bear trap.

Peter Høeg / quote

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20c. 1988 AD

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

Peter Høeg / quote

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21c. 1988 AD

deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive.

Peter Høeg / quote

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22c. 1988 AD

I've had the privilege of learning foreign languages. Instead of merely speaking a watered-down form of my mother tongue, like most people, I'm also helpless in two or three other languages.

Peter Høeg / quote

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23c. 1988 AD

Danes express their strongest feelings in conjunction with food. That became clear to me the first time I was out visiting friends with Moritz. When I took a third helping of cookies, he looked straight at me."Keep on taking until you're ashamed of yourself," he said.I wasn't confident about my Danish, but I understood what he meant. I helped myself three more times. Without taking my eyes off him. The room disappeared, the people we were visiting disappeared, I didn't taste the cookies. Only Moritz existed."I'm still not ashamed," I said.I helped myself three more times. Then he grabbed the platter and put it out of my reach. I had won. The first of a long series of small, important victories over him and Danish manners.

Peter Høeg / quote

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24c. 1988 AD

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

Peter Høeg / quote

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