You don’t think when you play music, you just try to play and be in it. It is the same for me when the writing is going really well. It’s the same ki….

Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know….

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar ….

Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of s….

A problem with my novels is that they, from the start, have been infantile and incredibly childish. There are childishness, stupidity, lack of wisdom….

I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it..

We live in the best of worlds. But still, it's like we've lost something on the way to here: a sense of life. I can't know for sure, I might be the o….

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations..

I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. Tha….

I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings tha….

For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day..

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying..

National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have t….

When I look back at what I've written and try to explain it, it doesn't help, but it helps to be in a process of writing. It's the same thing with re….

In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an….

The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought,….

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to….

As a person, I'm polite - I want to please..

I try to write about small insignificant things. I try to find out if it’s possible to say anything about them. And I almost always do if I sit down ….

I've always been a fast reader. Now I had to do it slowly, discussing each sentence. And every time I wanted to change something I had to come up wit….

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's ….