Jo Nesbo Quotes

I don't have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms ... I can write anywhere. ~ Jo Nesbo

longevity bestowed respect, even upon a whorehouse madam if she kept going for long enough. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

Christian ethics demand that you should not take revenge. The paradox is, naturally, that Christians worship a God who is the greatest avenger of them all. Defy him and you burn in eternal hell, an act of revenge which is completely out of proportion to the crime ~ Jo Nesbo

Fourteen minutes later he had finished. He had presented the ~ Jo Nesbo

They're so rich and revered that they have neither electricity nor running water. Only social climbers have a sauna and a Jacuzzi. ~ Jo Nesbo

To err is human, to forgive is divine. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

Harry went closer and could see she was attractive. And there was something about the relaxed way she spoke, the way she looked him straight in the eye, that suggested that she was also self-assured. A professional woman, he guessed. Something requiring a cool, rational mind. Estate agent, head of a department in a bank, politician or something like that. Well-off at any rate, of that he was fairly sure. It wasn't just the coat and the colossal house behind her, but something in the attitude and the high, aristocratic cheekbones. She walked down the steps as if walking along a straight line, made it seem easy. Ballet lessons, Harry thought. ~ Jo Nesbo

A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others. ~ Jo Nesbo

Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

Oh, yes, they're still angry. At Third World aid, cuts in the defence budget, women priests, marriages for homosexuals, our new countrymen, all the things you would guess would upset these old boys. In their hearts they're still fascists. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

there were gods who needed to be worshipped and placated, and the currency for that was blood. ~ Jo Nesbo

The snow was dancing like cotton wool in the light of the street lamps. Aimlessly, unable to decide whether it wanted to fall up or down, just letting itself be driven by the hellish, ice-cold wind that was sweeping in from the great darkness covering the Oslo fjord. Together they swirled, wind and snow, round and round in the darkness between the warehouses on the quayside that were all shut up for the night. Until the wind got fed up and dumped it's dance partner beside the wall. And there the dry, windswept snow was settling around the shoes of the man I had just shot I the chest and the neck. ~ Jo Nesbo

We're prisioners of... things.Of who we are. ~ Jo Nesbo

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 Nesbo

If every baby was a perfect miracle, life was basically a process of degeneration. ~ Jo Nesbo

Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults ~ Jo Nesbo

[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

case in California about a senator who - ' Harry ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

Was going to drown. Woo had attached him to the drain at the bottom of the pool with his own handcuffs. He looked up. The moon was shining down on him through a filter of water. He stretched his free arm up and out of the water. Hell, the pool was only one meter deep here! Harry crouched and tried to stand up, stretched with all his might. The handcuff cut into his thumb, but still his mouth was twenty centimeters below the surface. He noticed the shadow at the edge of the pool moving away. Shit! Don't panic, he thought. Panic uses up oxygen. He sank to the bottom and examined the grille with his fingers. It was made of steel and was totally immovable, it didn't budge even when he grabbed it with both hands and pulled. How long could he hold his breath? One minute? Two? All his muscles ached, his temples throbbed and red stars were dancing in front of his eyes. He tried to jerk himself loose. His mouth was dry with fear, his brain had started producing ~ Jo Nesbo

And, according to that Hume guy, the fact that I had until now woken up every morning in the same body, into the same world, where what had happened had actually happened, was no guarantee that the same thing would happen again tomorrow morning. ~ Jo Nesbo

There was a saying during the war: Those who decide late will always decide right. At Christmas in 1943 we could see that our front was moving backwards, but we had no real idea how bad it was. Anyway, no one could accuse Sindre of changing like a weather-vane. Unlike those at home who sat on their backsides during the war and suddenly rushed to join the Resistance in the last months. We used to call them the latter-day saints'. A few of them today swell the ranks of those who make public statements about the Norwegians' heroic efforts for the right side. ~ Jo Nesbo

that it was impossible to get rid of it without ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

Never apologise for the questions you asked; apologise for the ones you didn't ask.' The ~ Jo Nesbo

Harry had felt the gnawing ache for alcohol from the moment he woke up that morning. First as an instinctive physical craving, then as a panic-stricken fear because he had put a distance between himself and his medicine by not taking his hip flask or any money with him to work. Now the ache was entering a new phase in which it was both a wholly physical pain and a feeling of blank terror that he would be torn to pieces. The enemy below was pulling and tugging at the chains, the dogs were snarling up at him from the pit, somewhere in his stomach beneath his heart. God, how he hated them. He hated them as much as they hated him. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

What a country of lazy shits, with fucking hypocritical politicians claiming that people actually wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because it made it a human right to shirk their jobs, and who the hell wouldn't vote for a party that gave you three days off without a doctor's note, gave you carte blanche to sit at home and jerk off or go skiing or recover from a hangover? The Socialist Party knew, of course, what a perk this was, but still tried to appear responsible, preened themselves with their "trust in most people" and declared the right to malinger as some kind of social reform. The Progress Party was even more fucking infuriating, buying itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothering to conceal the fact. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction. ~ Jo Nesbo

People change. The person you long for may no longer exist. Bloody hell, we all change, don't we. Once something has been experienced, it's too late, you can't get back the feeling of experiencing the same thing for the first time. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books. ~ Jo Nesbo

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting. ~ Jo Nesbo

You sound like someone who thinks he has to fight the whole world," Joseph said. "But if you don't drop your guard now and then, your arms will be too weary to fight. ~ Jo Nesbo

I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious - to say something about the human condition that hasn't been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do. ~ Jo Nesbo

The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn't something I'd think about until I'd turn the machine on again. ~ Jo Nesbo

Insanity just is, a kind of natural disaster that strikes out of the blue, the kind of thing that can happen. ~ Jo Nesbo

I have to feel that I'm going somewhere all the time. By definition, if you have this urge to go places, then you can't be 100 percent happy where you are. It's not like I enjoy being miserable for weeks on end. But I think it's good to be miserable for about one day every third week - that's ideal for me. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

Oppression often turns out to be the expectations we impose on ourselves and the expectations we interpret those around us as having. ~ Jo Nesbo

Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament. ~ Jo Nesbo

For justice is a blunt knife, both as a philosophy and as a judge. ~ Jo Nesbo

... the girl he loved, but wished he didn't love, because he didn't want to love someone who was just like him, imperfect, with faults and failings, another self-sacrificing, pathetic slave to love, who obediently read people's lips but never spoke herself, who subordinated herself and found her reward in that. But at the same time, he couldn't manage not to love her. She was everything he wished he didn't want. She was his own humiliation. And the best, the most human, the most beautiful thing he knew. ~ Jo Nesbo

Fate. Hell and karma. It's what governs our lives. ~ Jo Nesbo

He considered what he should do with the rest of his life. And he considered whether you ever found out if you had made the right decisions while you were still alive. It ~ Jo Nesbo

Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller. ~ Jo Nesbo

Watching TV gives you confidence. When you see how stupid people generally are on the box it makes you feel smart. And scientific studies show that people who feel smart perform better than people who feel stupid. ~ Jo Nesbo

Aristotle wrote that the human soul is purged by the fear and compassion that tragedy evokes. ~ Jo Nesbo

Love's the sum total of all the little things you can never really put your finger on. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops but you get warm. ~ Jo Nesbo

So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking." "And afterward?" "I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don't know why in fact, it was like a big cleanup. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: 'Hi, we can't meet anymore. It was nice knowing ~ Jo Nesbo

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 Nesbo

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 Nesbo

Doubt is faith's shadow. ~ Jo Nesbo

Watched the close-cropped, long-legged policeman with the bad back stride quickly out of the canteen. ~ Jo Nesbo

In a nutshell, Harry, they're two sides of the same coin. Life becomes a living hell, but the alternative is even worse. Ha ~ Jo Nesbo

After the show the bar began to thin out. Birgitta ~ Jo Nesbo

A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

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

We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness. ~ Jo Nesbo

There is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his stature than a woman telling him she loves him. and however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her. ~ Jo Nesbo

I think I was righteous. I saw myself as the good guy in my own movie. I didn't get into many fights when I was younger, but when I did, they were righteous. I always thought I was defending something good. I fought for friends who couldn't fight for themselves. I was still being selfish and arrogant, but I was focused on what was fair and unfair. ~ Jo Nesbo

Everyone asks what the meaning of life is, but no one asks about the meaning of death. ~ Jo Nesbo

Suddenly he realised why so many of the inmates went to the young man to talk. It was the silence. The beckoning vacuum of someone who simply listens without reaction or judgement. Who extracts your words and your secrets from you without doing anything at all. ~ Jo Nesbo

I'm afraid I didn't really like Caracas in Venezuela. From what I saw it seemed so crime-ridden that you really have to be on your guard all the time. ~ Jo Nesbo

'Phantom' was for me an interesting technique of telling the story. You have one voice that it is in the present telling what is happening, and then there's one voice from the past that's also driving the story forward. And you know that the two story lines will meet eventually. ~ Jo Nesbo

Because we're the police,' Harry said. 'And not giggling concubines. ~ Jo Nesbo

It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something ... the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe. ~ Jo Nesbo

We're doomed to be do-gooders for the rest of our lives and doomed to fail. But, happily, truth is a relative business. ~ Jo Nesbo

I'm working on a large project which I hope will become a book. A war book.' 'Hasn't someone already written that one? ~ Jo Nesbo

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

Physical pain is not the worst thing a human has to deal with," Altman said. "Believe me, I see it every day. Not death, either. Nor even fear of death." "What is the worst, then?" "Humiliation. To be deprived of honor and dignity. To be disrobed, to be cast out by the flock. That's the worst punishment; it's akin to being buried alive. And the only consolation is that the person will perish fairly quickly." "Mm." Harry kept eye contact with Altman. "You don't have anything in that cupboard to lighten the atmosphere, ~ Jo Nesbo

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

Of how it could have been. And reflecting on the fact that he had stopped thinking about how it could be. Perhaps this was what it was like getting old. He had lifted the cards he had been dealt, he had seen them. You didn't get new ones. So all that was left was to play the ones you had as well as you could. And dream about the cards you might have been given. ~ Jo Nesbo

It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters. "The waiters here are like the planet Pluto," Andrew said. "They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye. ~ Jo Nesbo

Don't, he thought. Don't let it happen. 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. Harry ~ Jo Nesbo

Simon closed his eyes again. He nodded slowly. "So we're slaves to love. And who we're given to love, that's a lottery too. Is that what you're saying?" "It's brutal, but that's how it is," Sissel declared. "And the gods laugh," Simon said. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

In any conflict we instinctively take the side of those who look most like us. ~ Jo Nesbo

Don't forget that in Thailand you're brought up never to admit a mistake. ~ Jo Nesbo

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

He saw beauty where no one could imagine it. And for that reason it was his alone. And he was its. ~ Jo Nesbo

The statistical probability of being murdered in Norway was about one in ten thousand. When ~ Jo Nesbo

How's your girlfriend?'
'Birgitta?' Harry was quiet, 'I don't know. She wont talk to me. Feeling terrible, I hope.'
'Why do you hope she's feeling terrible?'
'I hope she loves me, of course.'
Sandra emitted a rasping laugh. 'And how are you. Harry Holy?'
'Terrible.' Harry smiled sadly ~ Jo Nesbo

On page six his eyes fell on a large photograph of a wooden road sign with a sun cross painted on. Oslo 2,611 km, it said on one arm, Leningrad 5 km on the other. The article beneath was credited to Even ~ Jo Nesbo

No, of love. It's the same currency. Everything starts with love. Hatred is just the other side of the coin. ~ Jo Nesbo

A few days later Kurt called him to say that Harry Hole had been sent to the front, to some God-forsaken place in Sweden. Brandhaug had literally rubbed his hands with glee. ~ Jo Nesbo

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact. ~ Jo Nesbo

You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling. ~ Jo Nesbo

The door here is high, and the gate is wide. ~ Jo Nesbo