Home > Work > Nemesis (Harry Hole, #4)
41 " In the staff room they argued for days about whether Kebab should be punished. After all, he hadn’t thrown the snowball at anyone, so the question was: Should a person be punished for showing no consideration towards an idiot behaving like an idiot? "
― Jo Nesbø , Nemesis (Harry Hole, #4)
42 " The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. "
43 " Good police officers are ugly.’ * "
44 " In 1589, Denmark introduced the death penalty for gypsy ringleaders,’ he said. ‘Fifty years later the Swedes decided all male gypsies should be hanged. In Moravia they cut the left ear off gypsy women, in Bohemia the right. The Archbishop of Mainz proclaimed that all gypsies should be executed without a conviction as their way of life was outlawed. In 1725, a law was passed in Prussia that all gypsies over eighteen should be executed without a trial, but later this law was repealed–the age limit was put down to fourteen. Four of my father’s brothers died in captivity. Only one of them during the War. Shall I continue? "
45 " I’ll never forget the expression in his eyes when he led home a small, tame brown bear. He had bought it with his last money from a group of Ursari. “It can dance,” my father said. The communists paid to see a dancing bear. It made them feel better about themselves. Stefan, my brother, tried to feed the bear, but it wouldn’t eat, and my mother asked if it was sick. He answered that they had walked all the way from Bucharest and just needed to rest. The bear died four days later. "
46 " With regard to power, women don’t have the vanity men have. They don’t need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. "
47 " Good police officers are ugly. "
48 " Fate. Hell and karma. It’s what governs our lives. "
49 " On Christmas Day we broke into our first kiosk, and we knew we had come to the right place.’ Raskol beamed. ‘It was like taking candy from a baby. "
50 " Aye, aye, boss. Regards to your wife.’ Harry craned his head round on the way out. ‘Coriander’s on the far left, bottom shelf.’ Bjarne Møller stood staring into his shopping basket. He remembered the reason now. He liked the alcoholic, obstreperous, stubborn bastard. "
51 " Harry huddled up. The cold, raw wind blew right through him as if he were a ghost. These were thoughts he had managed to keep at bay, but now they crowded in on him: if he couldn’t know whether he was capable of cheating on the woman he treasured most in his life, how could he know what else he had done? Aune maintained that drink and drugs merely strengthened or weakened qualities latent within us. But who knew for sure what was inside them? Humans are not robots and the chemistry of the brain changes over time. Who had a full inventory of all the things–given the right circumstances and the wrong medication–we are capable of doing? "
52 " Because we’re the police,’ Harry said. ‘And not giggling concubines. "
53 " The fog was back. It seeped in through the streets, from the cracks around the closed windows behind the trees in the avenue, out of the blue door which opened after they had heard Weber’s abrupt bark over the intercom, and out through the keyholes in the doors they passed on the way upstairs. "
54 " Halvorsen didn’t hear anything as he had taken Travis’s exhortation – they were on the radio – literally: ‘Sing, sing, siiing!’ ‘Halvorsen …’ ‘For the love you bring … "
55 " electric "
56 " off that for a long time. I was an alcoholic before I was thirty. Perhaps before I was twenty, it depends on how you look at things. They say it’s in your genes. Possibly. When I grew up I found out my grandfather in Åndalsnes had been drunk every day for fifty years. We went there every summer until I was fifteen and never noticed a thing. Unfortunately I haven’t inherited that talent. I’ve done things which have not exactly gone unnoticed. In a nutshell, it’s a miracle I’ve still got a job in the police force. "
57 " On the subject of ancient gods, I assume you have heard of Narkissos, the Greek god who became so enamoured of his own reflection that he couldn’t tear himself away? Freud introduced the concept of a narcissist to psychology, a person with an exaggerated sense of uniqueness, obsessed by the dream of boundless success. For the narcissist the need for revenge against those who have affronted him or her is often greater than all other needs. It is called the “narcissist’s rage”. "
58 " Headlines on the newspaper stand implied that people had begun to get sick of the so-called war on terror, which now had the somewhat odious connotation of an election slogan and had furthermore lost momentum since no one knew where the principal offender was. "
59 " Ja tu nekontrolē notikumus, tie kontrolēs tevi. "
60 " With regard to power, women don’t have the vanity men have. They don’t need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. "