The Cold Song QUOTES

1 " Occasionally, for a fleeting, horrified moment, she caught a glimpse of herself. The shrill note in her voice. The stupid words. It was as if there were something heavy weighing on her tongue that had to be removed immediately—that expression, It’s time I took matters in hand, uttered in such a phony way—and out of her mouth she plucked a big, shiny bug. And then another. And one more. Her mouth full of big, shiny bugs. "

― Linn Ullmann , The Cold Song

3 " It’s from Strindberg’s novella Alone,” he added, “and I’m going to begin in the middle of a sentence, I think Jenny would have liked that.” He smiled. And then he read: “I had, however, noted that we were not so quick to smile as before and that we observed a certain care in our speech. We had discovered the weight and the worth of the spoken word. Life had certainly not mellowed our judgment, but wisdom had eventually taught us that all one’s words come back to one; furthermore we had come to see that men cannot be described in full tones, but that one must also use halftones in order to express as accurately as possible one’s opinion of a person.” After "

― Linn Ullmann , The Cold Song