61
" For her our row was long forgotten. It was just me who could be gruff and sullen for several weeks, just me who could nourish resentment for several years. Against no one else but her though. Linda was the only person I argued with, she was the only person I held grudges against. If my mother, my brother or my friends said something offensive, I let it go. Nothing of what they said touched me or mattered very much to me, not really. I assumed it was part of my life as an adult that I had succeeded in muting all the overtones and undertones of my character, which at first had been explosive, and I would therefore live the rest of my life in peace and tranquillity, and solve any cohabitation problems with irony, sarcasm and the sulky silence I had honed to perfection after the three lengthy relationships I’d had. But with Linda it was as though I had been cast back to the time when my feelings swung from wild elation to wild fury to the pits of despair and desperation, the time when I lived in a series of all-decisive moments, and the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable, and when nothing could give me any peace of mind except books, with their different places, different times and different people, where I was no one and no one was me.
That was when I was young and had no options.
Now I was thirty-five years old and wanted as few disturbances and as little mental agitation as possible, I should be able to have that, shouldn’t I, or at least be in a position to get it?
Didn’t really look like it. "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
63
" Ibsen tinha razão. Confirmava-o tudo o que via à minha volta. As relações com os outros existiam para extirpar a individualidade, para aprisionar a liberdade, para recalcar o que procurava emergir. (...) Quando eu lhe apresentava a minha opinião, soprava de fúria e acusava-me de defender uma concepção americana desprovida de conteúdo, falaciosa e vazia. Estava convencida de que existíamos para os outros. Mas fora essa ideia que dera origem à sistematização actual da nossa maneira de viver, eliminando por completo o imprevisível e fazendo com que passássemos do jardim-de-infância à escola e à universidade e, depois, entrássemos na vida profissional como se nunca saíssemos de um túnel, mas acreditando que escolhêramos tudo por nossa livre vontade, quando, na realidade, fôramos peneirados como grãos de areia desde o nosso primeiro dia de escola: alguns eram encaminhados para uma carreira prática, outros para uma formação teórica, uns para cima e outros para baixo, embora nos tivessem ensinado que todos éramos iguais. Fora essa ideia que nos conduzira, pelos menos na minha geração, a esperar tudo da vida, a viver acreditando que podíamos exigir, a formular toda a espécie de exigências à realidade e a acusar sempre as circunstâncias, em vez de nós próprios, quando as coisas não corriam como imagináramos, ou a incriminarmos furiosamente o Estado se, depois de um tsunami, não fôssemos imediatamente socorridos. "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
65
" When I think of my three children it is not only their distinctive faces that appear before me, but also the quite distinct feeling they radiate. This feeling, which is constant, is what they “are” for me. And what they “are” has been present in them ever since the first day I saw them. At that time they could barely do anything, and the little bit they could do, like sucking on a breast, raising their arms as reflex actions, looking at their surroundings, imitating, they could all do that, thus what they “are” has nothing to do with qualities, has nothing to do with what they can or can’t do, but is more a kind of light that shines within them. Their "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
68
" Yes, all of this I thought about, all of this filled me with sorrow and a sense of helplessness, and if there was a world I turned to in my mind, it was that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with its enormous forests, its sailing ships and horse-drawn carts, its windmills and castles, its monasteries and small towns, its painters and thinkers, explorers and inventors, priests and aldrugstores. What would it have been like to live in a world where everything was made from the power of yours hands, the wind or the water? What would it have been like to live in a world where the American Indians still lived their lives in peace? Where that life was an actual possibility? Where Africa was unconquered? Where darkness came with the sunset and light with the sunrise? Where there were too few humans and their tools were too rudimentary to have any effect on animal stocks, let alone wipe them out? Where you could not travel from one place to another without exerting yourself, and a comfortable life was something only the rich could afford, where the sea was full of whales, the forests full of bears and wolves, and there were still countries that were so alien no adventure story could do them justice, such as China, to which a voyage not only took several months and was the prerogative of only a tiny minority of sailors and traders, but was also fraught with danger. Admittedly, that world was rough and wretched, filthy and ravaged with sickness, drunken and ignorant, full of pain, low life expectancy and rampant superstition, but it produced the greatest writer, Shakespeare, the greatest painter, Rembrandt, the greatest scientist, Newton, all still unsurpassed in their fields, and how can it be that this period achieved this wealth? Was it because death was closer and life was starker as a result? "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
70
" Toate locurile pe care le purtam în mine, pe care le rememorasem de un infinit de ori pe parcursul vieții se perindau prin fața geamului de mașină fără nicio aură, complet neutre, așa cum erau de fapt. Niște piscuri, un golfuleț, un dig plutitor dărăpănat, un țărm îngust, niște case vechi, în spate, câmpia care se prăvălea spre apă. Asta era tot. "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
72
" When you visualized the future and conjured up a world where urban life had spread everywhere and man had achieved his long-desired symbiosis with the machine, you never took account of the simplest elements, beer, for example, so golden and flavorsome and robust, made from corn in the field and hops in the meadow, or bread or beetroot with its sweet but dark, earthy taste, all this we had always eaten and drunk at tables made of wood, inside windows through which beams of sunlight fell. "
― Karl Ove Knausgård , Min kamp 2 (Min kamp #2)
