Karl Ove Knausgard
Karl Ove Knausgard
Karl Ove Knausgårdis a Norwegian author, known for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth6 December 1968
CountryNorway
believe trying fiction
I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.
trying might gone
Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.
writing modern-novel trying
In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot.
feelings important way
I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.
writing emotional thinking
I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.
writing thinking world
If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.
writing thinking play
You don't think when you play music, you just try to play and be in it. It is the same for me when the writing is going really well. It's the same kind of feeling. I'm just in it. It's not the words, it's not the sentences, I'm not aware of it. Then it's good.
want polite please
As a person, I'm polite - I want to please.
people different three
The way we deny death says something about how we live our lives, doesn't it? At least in Sweden or Scandinavia, you don't have to search further back in time than maybe three generations to find another way to relate to death. People then had a different, closer relationship with death; at least it was like that in the countryside.
running reading writing
When I look back at what I've written and try to explain it, it doesn't help, but it helps to be in a process of writing. It's the same thing with reading - you lose yourself when you read as well. When I was younger I used literature that way, it was just escapism, a tool to run away from things.
creativity stupidity fantasy
A problem with my novels is that they, from the start, have been infantile and incredibly childish. There are childishness, stupidity, lack of wisdom, fantasies. At the same time, that's where my creativity can be found. If I tried to control it and make it more mature, it wouldn't be good at all. It'd be uninteresting, without any vivacity.
book writing thinking
We live in the best of worlds. But still, it's like we've lost something on the way to here: a sense of life. I can't know for sure, I might be the only one who's lost it. Maybe everybody else is living the now, thinking they're having it well. Anyhow, that motivated me to write the books.
lying believe want
Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.
intelligent thinking mind
I've always been a fast reader. Now I had to do it slowly, discussing each sentence. And every time I wanted to change something I had to come up with an intelligent defense I could be pretty sure that they would turn my suggestion down, as they had so many aspects to keep in mind. However, if I argued well, I could have a chance. I had to think of every comma, every word.