Quotes About Nesbo

#1. I like Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. There are so many good books in the world. I don't want to spend time reading bad crime novels.

Maj Sjowall

#2. Most likely because the majority of the receptionists have gone home, to a sick partner according to statistics, in the country with the shortest working hours in the world, the biggest health budget and the highest proportion of sick leave.

Jo Nesbo

#3. Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.

Jo Nesbo

#4. All interesting heroes have an Achilles' heel.

Jo Nesbo

#5. [Rakel] It feels a bit like jumping out of a burning house. Falling is better than burning.
[Harry] At least until you land.
[Rakel] I've come to realize that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being.

Jo Nesbo

#6. But there is always a point where things can no longer be put off, where you can't be weak one more day and promise yourself that tomorrow, tomorrow you will start that other life.

Jo Nesbo

#7. Are you dying?"
Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry.

Jo Nesbo

#8. What was it Harry used to say? Intuition is only the sum of many small but specific things the brain hasn't managed to put a name to yet.

Jo Nesbo

#9. The bat is the Aboriginal symbol of death. Did you know that? Harry did not.

Jo Nesbo

#10. The door here is high, and the gate is wide.

Jo Nesbo

#11. You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

Jo Nesbo

#12. Incomprehensible, his colleagues tended to say when they discovered young people who had chosen to take their own lives. Harry assumed they said that to protect themselves, to reject the whole idea of it. If not, he didn't understand what they meant by its being incomprehensible.

Jo Nesbo

#13. For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

Jo Nesbo

#14. No persons or events mentioned in this book should be confused with real persons or events. Reality is far too strange for that.

Jo Nesbo

#15. We have this attitude that people become drug addicts against their will. That they couldn't possibly want this kind of life. But maybe that's not true. Maybe they don't want to live like other people - it just wouldn't suit them.

Jo Nesbo

#16. Would you kill someone to have the right of disposal over fifty million kroner for six years?" "Depends on who I had to kill," Liz said. "I know a couple of people I would murder for less." "I mean: is fifty million kroner for six years the same as five million for sixty years?

Jo Nesbo

#17. There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower.

Jo Nesbo

#18. change of scene. A new start. And it worked.

Jo Nesbo

#19. there were gods who needed to be worshipped and placated, and the currency for that was blood.

Jo Nesbo

#20. Many people spend their whole lives somewhere they don't want to be out of fear that the alternative is worse.

Jo Nesbo

#21. We have forensic psychiatrists who try to draw a line between those who are sick and those who are criminal, and they bend and twist the truth to make it fit into their world of theoretical models.

Jo Nesbo

#22. It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason.

Jo Nesbo

#23. To err is human, to forgive is divine.

Jo Nesbo

#24. Where are we going now?" Harry asked. "To the circus! I promised a friend I would pop by one day. And today is one day, isn't it.

Jo Nesbo

#25. I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.

Jo Nesbo

#26. I was a really bad taxi driver. I only collided twice but it was one time too much.

Jo Nesbo

#27. In traditional crime fiction every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It's bullshit! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child's deepest secrets.

Jo Nesbo

#28. Aristotle wrote that the human soul is purged by the fear and compassion that tragedy evokes.

Jo Nesbo

#29. Sometimes we're wrong when we think that we know the truth about our parents.

Jo Nesbo

#30. You can't see a person more nakedly than that, when they don't know they're being watched, studied.

Jo Nesbo

#31. The truth we make for ourselves is just the sum of what is in someone's interest, balanced by the power they hold.

Jo Nesbo

#32. Life owes you, but sometimes you have to be your own fucking debt collector. And if we have to burn in hell for it, heaven's going to be sparsely populated.

Jo Nesbo

#33. A personality disorder doesn't mean he is stupid. Sufferers are just as good, frequently better, at achieving their aims. What distinguishes them from us is that they want different things.

Jo Nesbo

#34. That was what life was: a process of destruction, a disintegration from what at the outset was perfect. The only suspense involved was whether we would be destroyed in one sudden act or slowly.

Jo Nesbo

#35. A tone can't be off-key. A tone isn't off- key until it is set alongside other tones. - Harry Hole

Jo Nesbo

#36. The best brothels in Bangkok seem to have a weakness for Greek names,' [Liz] commented acidly and got out. Harry looked up at a large neon sign proclaiming that the motel was called Olympussy.

Jo Nesbo

#37. After the show the bar began to thin out. Birgitta

Jo Nesbo

#38. than those we arrested here

Jo Nesbo

#39. Had kicked the chair away from underneath him. That's why he clawed his own neck

Jo Nesbo

#40. Balance is of the essence,' she said. 'That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience.

Jo Nesbo

#41. Sharing secrets binds people together though," Harry whispered into her hair. "And that's not always what people want.

Jo Nesbo

#42. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. Ignoring the warning on the cigarette packet might not be the most flamboyant act of rebellion a man could allow himself, but at least it was one he could afford.

Jo Nesbo

#43. The nature of Scandinavians is that they don't talk so much, there will be these dark secrets, and most things are under-communicated.

Jo Nesbo

#44. Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.

Jo Nesbo

#45. It was the logic of retaliation that created the constitutional state. The enshrined promise of an eye for an eye, the sinner burning in hell or at least dangling for the gallows. Revenge is basically the foundation of civilization

Jo Nesbo

#46. Just imagine walking away from something you've started. Something you really believed would be good. I don't think i could ever do that.

Jo Nesbo

#47. It's strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself.

Jo Nesbo

#48. How much do you know about noctambulism - in other words, sleepwalking?" "I know that people can walk in their sleep. Talk in their sleep. Eat, get dressed and even go out and drive a car in their sleep.

Jo Nesbo

#49. Revenge, revenge, revenge. Did you know that humans are the only living creatures to practise revenge? The interesting thing about revenge -

Jo Nesbo

#50. Well, religion was like fire insurance; you never really thought you'd need it, so when people said that the boy was prepared to take your sins upon himself and didn't want anything in return, why not say yes to some peace of mind?

Jo Nesbo

#51. The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn't change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants.

Jo Nesbo

#52. He went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard.

Jo Nesbo

#53. Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.

Jo Nesbo

#54. My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.

Jo Nesbo

#55. This man, commenting on the attack at Dennis Kebab, says we need more racists like Sverre Olsen to regain control of Norway. In the interview the word "racist" is used as a term of respect. Does the accused consider himself a "racist"?

Jo Nesbo

#56. Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?

Jo Nesbo

#57. Nybakk's shotgun in Oppsal was the easier option. Furthermore, a shotgun gave him more room to maneuver. To retrieve the rifle

Jo Nesbo

#58. We're probably more like our parents than we'd like to believe.

Jo Nesbo

#59. We don't punish people because they are evil, but because they make bad choices, choices that are bad for the herd. Morality isn't heaven-sent or eternal, just a set of rules that benefit the herd.

Jo Nesbo

#60. If life is such a painful experience and we can't change that, why can't this person just be allowed to die?

Jo Nesbo

#61. Smoking's banned in my house. Cigarettes harm your body, he said, knocking back half of the bottle of beer.

Jo Nesbo

#62. Who was the mad bastard who taught you to drive?' he asked, holding on tight as they swerved in and out between cars on the three-lane motorway leading to Ekeberg tunnel. 'Self-taught,' Beate said.

Jo Nesbo

#63. As usual, he had escaped into his work when his private life became too much of a burden. It was typical of a certain type of man, he had read.

Jo Nesbo

#64. When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.

Jo Nesbo

#65. Revenge is a frequent motive in suicides, you know. They feel it is someone's fault their lives have been unsuccessful, and they want to inflict this guilt on others by committing suicide.

Jo Nesbo

#66. The Stones are not the world's greatest band. Not even the world's second greatest band. What they are is the world's most overrated band. And it wasn't Keith or Mick who wrote "Wild Horses". It was Gram Parsons.

Jo Nesbo

#67. When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

Jo Nesbo

#68. I just know that when I'm walking on the wafer-thin ice of happiness, I'm terrified, so terrified that I wish it was over, that I was already in the water.

Jo Nesbo

#69. Can you feel it? The vibration? It's the energy from everyone around us. It's in the air. If you're dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It's true!

- Runa Molnes

Jo Nesbo

#70. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.

Jo Nesbo

#71. You know someone's okay if they can ignore things they can't do anything about and move on.

Jo Nesbo

#72. The younger officer accompanying Waaler was learning something new every day. This afternoon, for example, he learned it was very stupid to rock on a chair while insulting someone, because you are totally defenseless if the insulted party steps over and lands a straight right between the eyes.

Jo Nesbo

#73. They had once sworn to tell each other everything, absolutely everything, and after they had done that, after they had tested how much truth the other could tolerate, their stories had become the walls and the roof that held their home together.

Jo Nesbo

#74. Four years later, after Mathias had killed a further four women, and he could see that all the murders were an attempt to reconstruct the murder of his mother, he concluded that he was mad.

Jo Nesbo

#75. He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another from the bottle of whisky room service had brought up: Jameson. The only good thing ever to come out of Ireland.

Jo Nesbo

#76. Ever since the '70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores.

Jo Nesbo

#77. . . we know . . . we . . . uh, what was that again?

Jo Nesbo

#78. If every baby was a perfect miracle, life was basically a process of degeneration.

Jo Nesbo

#79. Most of the water, however, did not run into the wall, but down it, because water, like cowardice and lust, always finds the lowest level.

Jo Nesbo

#80. Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the "real" women's body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible mold.

Jo Nesbo

#81. For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write!

Jo Nesbo

#82. A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others.

Jo Nesbo

#83. I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.

Jo Nesbo

#84. Then two identical Cadillac Fleetwoods (special Secret Service cars flown in from the US) and the President sitting in one of them. Which one was kept secret. Or perhaps he was sitting in both, Harry thought. One for Jekyll and one for Hyde.

Jo Nesbo

#85. Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction.

Jo Nesbo

#86. Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.

Jo Nesbo

#87. Listen, I am someone who had chosen to earn their daily bread killing other people. I'm inclined to give people a bit of leeway when it comes to their actions and decisions.

Jo Nesbo

#88. They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women. It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us.

Jo Nesbo

#89. Because they drive on the left in China,

Jo Nesbo

#90. For justice is a blunt knife, both as a philosophy and as a judge.

Jo Nesbo

#91. An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I'm afraid to say, has been understood.

Jo Nesbo

#92. What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.

Jo Nesbo

#93. Good police officers are ugly.' *

Jo Nesbo

#94. Christ, we're living in Sydney, the only town in the world where people are closet heteros.

Jo Nesbo

#95. Catharsis. Revenge cleanses. Aristotle wrote that the human soul is purged by the fear and compassion that tragedy evokes. It's a frightening thought that we fulfil the soul's innermost desire through the tragedy of revenge, isn't it.

Jo Nesbo

#96. Heredity. It's like going to a fortune-teller and regretting it. As human beings, we tend not to like things we can't avoid. Death, for instance.

Jo Nesbo

#97. The United States of America is more than just an ally,' Brandhaug began with an imperceptible smile. He said it with the same intonation that you use to explain to a non-Norwegian that Norway has a king and that the capital is Oslo.

Jo Nesbo

#98. Revenge is the thinking man's reflex, a complex blend of action and consistency no other animal species has so far succeeded in evolving. Evolutionary speaking, the practice of taking revenge has shown itself to the so effective that only the most vengeful of us have survived.

Jo Nesbo

#99. The goddess Nemesis, Bertol Grimmer's favourite motif after the War. The goddess of revenge.

Jo Nesbo

#100. The brain works best between half past six and eleven. After that it's mush,

Jo Nesbo