Jo Nesbø Quotes

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

~ Jo Nesbø

And what’s your unhappiness due to, Harry?The words came out before he had time to think. “Loving someone who loves me.

~ Jo Nesbø

They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes.

~ Jo Nesbø

You are Bellman, aren’t you? The genius who sent the sauna ape after me?” Harry nodded toward the Finn.

~ Jo Nesbø

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. You can’t learn that...

~ Jo Nesbø

Perhaps that was a thing about attractive women: A rejection demanded their respect, made them trust you more.

~ Jo Nesbø

No one can leave someone they have good sex with. They can try, but they always go back. We’re simple souls like that, aren’t we?

~ Jo Nesbø

Sick is a relative concept. We’re all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behavior? No actions are in themselves symptoms of sickness. You have to look at the context within which these actions are performed.

~ Jo Nesbø

Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I'm the lowest grade.''I didn't mean to criticize you.''I promise to be better in my next life...

~ Jo Nesbø

...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 Nesbø

Wilhelm’s smile reminded Harry of his father’s sad, resigned smile, the smile of a man looking backwards because that’s where the things that made him smile were.

~ Jo Nesbø

Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?

~ Jo Nesbø

no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit. And the day we discover we are no different is the day we no longer want to live.

~ Jo Nesbø

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

~ Jo Nesbø

Hurt? He'll never be hurt–he's made to other people.

~ Jo Nesbø

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 Nesbø

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 Nesbø

What do we mean by ‘crazy’? What do we mean by ‘mad’? At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?

~ Jo Nesbø

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it,” Harry answered. “It’s a methodology.

~ Jo Nesbø

But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.

~ Jo Nesbø

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

~ Jo Nesbø

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 Nesbø

. 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 Nesbø

Bjarne Møller, my former boss, says people like me always choose the line of most resistance. It's in what he calls our 'accursed nature'. That's why we always end up on our own. I don't know. I like being alone. Perhaps I have grown to like my self-image of being a loner, too....I think you have to find something about yourself that you like in order to survive. Some people say being alone is unsociable and selfish. But you're independent and you don't drag others down with you, if that's the way you're heading. Many people are afraid of being alone. But it made me feel strong, free and invulnerable.

~ Jo Nesbø

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 Nesbø

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

~ Jo Nesbø

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 Nesbø

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

~ Jo Nesbø

in order to isolate what was possible, you had to eliminate everything that was impossible

~ Jo Nesbø