“ In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived. Knut Hamsun
“ No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation. Knut Hamsun
“ Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop. But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change. Knut Hamsun
“ No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be y… Knut Hamsun
“ I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation. Knut Hamsun
“ The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word... that by it's trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers.... One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret pow… Knut Hamsun
“ There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it. Knut Hamsun
“ You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. Knut Hamsun
“ An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness… Knut Hamsun
“ And here we go creating great men out of artisans who happened to have stumbled on a way to improve electrical apparatus or pedal through Sweden on a bicycle! And we solicit great men to write books p… Knut Hamsun
“ However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science. Knut Hamsun
“ They walked away from the sea, Rolandsen in the lead. He kept to the edge of the road, in the snow, to leave room for the others. He was wearing light, fashionable shoes, but seemed unperturbed; he ev… Knut Hamsun
“ That room was Rolandsen’s world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the… Knut Hamsun
“ He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk. ’Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so o… Knut Hamsun
“ I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand.… Knut Hamsun
“ The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people… Knut Hamsun
“ God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people's sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with the love of God and everyman. ... But the man is old, aft… Knut Hamsun
“ But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it… Knut Hamsun
“ You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice--that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am… Knut Hamsun
“ God is forgotten, the mighty dollar has taken his place and the mechanic cannot ease the troubled soul. The road is closed. Under circumstances such as these America only increases speed. America will… Knut Hamsun
