Scandinavian Mysteries Quotes

There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?
The Maid
The Informer by Steen Langtrup ~ Steen Langstrup

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

You just hang in there, boy, hang in with that apprenticeship of yours, do you hear me? You are lucky they would even take someone like you. You're a child of the slums. A ragtag. On top of that, you're a whining piece of shit. Nobody will ever do anything for you. Do you understand what I'm saying? They'll let you starve to death, no problem. Nobody is going to cry on your grave.
Poul-Erik's Mother
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

Those Zolofts make me so fucking hungry. I've gained 20 pounds – it's totally out of control."

George Hanson
In The Shadow of Sadd. ~ Steen Langstrup

That crap about doing something with your life are luxury problems. People like us have to play by a different rules.
#ShadowofSadd #Books ~ Steen Langstrup

I just can't comprehend, that you, Borge, of all people, couldn't keep your mouth shut. ~ Steen Langstrup

All that crap about love and fairness and doing something with your life, Bruno ... Those are luxury problems. The CEO's wife can go around worrying about that stuff. People like us from the projects have to play by a different set of rules."

George Hanson
In The Shadow of Sadd ~ Steen Langstrup

We were supposed to be heroes."
"There's no such thing as heroes."

Conversation between 'Alis K' and 'Borge'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

Jimmy Sadd is the most evil man I've ever known. I mean really evil. I'm not talking about tough, or cruel – all the bosses are tough and cruel. You'll never get anywhere in our world if you're not respected. But Jimmy ... God damn, Bruno, getting involved with Sadd ... I'd rather do a deal with the devil himself. Sadd is worse. You'll never get out."

George Hanson
In The Shadow of Sadd. ~ Steen Langstrup

Fuck!" he shouts. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"
"I'm not too fucking fond of loud noises, Bruno. Maybe it'd be a good idea if you backed up to the curb and got your insurance papers ready. We wouldn't want the police to get involved, would we?"
Conversation between Bruno Hanson and George Hanson
In The Shadow of Sadd. ~ Steen Langstrup

What if the saboteurs come while he's standing there pissing on our truck?"
"Then he's in trouble."

Conversation between two Gestapo Officers
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

I've been washing stairs my whole life. One day after the other. Since I was five years old. I've never complained. Shame on you. I'm embarrassed to have a son like you ... can't even look after his own bicycle. You just wait until your dad comes home. Then you'll be in trouble, I can tell you that much.
Poul-Erik's Mother
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

Meet me tonight, six o'clock sharp, at the gates of the municipal hospital. It is very important that you are precise. Not five minutes early, not five minutes late. In case I'm not there, you leave straight away. Got it?"

Ingrid aka 'Alis K'
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

What is the name of the woman on the telephone?"
"Alis K."
"Is that her real name?"
"No."

Conversation between 'BB' and his wife Grete
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

I've seen you in action, BB. You get turned on by danger. You are seeking danger. The only reason you're with me is the risk of getting caught by your wife."

Ingrid aka 'Alis K'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

AK 47, is perfect copy, yes? Every detail. Like real thing. Yes. Kalashnikov. Your boy, he be happy for Uncle Sante, no?"
"I'm sorry, Sante. It's really nice of you, but I don't want Sofus playing with guns."
Conversation between George Hanson and Sante
In The Shadow of Sadd ~ Steen Langstrup

You'll be very close to him when you shoot him. So shove the pistol in his face and pull the trigger instantly."

Ingrid aka 'Alis K'
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

Nothing you do makes much of a difference if you do not have charity. You can speak with tongues, have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries, and possess all knowledge; even if you have the faith to move mountains, without charity it won't profit you at all ... Without charity-or the pure love of Christ-whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

As we
dwell here between two mysteries, of a soul within and an ordered
Universe without, so among us are granted to dwell certain men of more
delicate intellectual fibre than their fellows
men whose minds have, as
it were, filaments to intercept, apprehend, conduct, translate home to us
stray messages between these two mysteries ~ Arthur Quiller-Couch

Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries. ~ Christopher Pike

That is what I love best about dreams, and about makings, good makings. They are folded-up buds of complications and mysteries, and if you stay with them patiently, they will unfold and unfold, and never stop unfolding. Dreams are flowers that never stop blooming. ~ Katherine Catmull

We have to report this."

Kai sighed deeply in relief. "I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves."

"Don't be ridiculous," Irene said briskly. "We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it. ~ Genevieve Cogman

Everything we do, every thought we've ever had, is produced by the human brain. But exactly how it operates remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries, and it seems the more we probe its secrets, the more surprises we find. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The mysteries of death and birth occupy women far more than is the case with men, to whom political and mercantile speculations are more congenial. ~ James Stephens

We are not meant to know everything, Mae. Did you ever think that perhaps our minds are delicately calibrated between the known and the unknown? That our souls need the mysteries of night and the clarity of day? Young people are creating ever-present daylight, and I think it will burn us all alive. There will be no time to reflect, to sleep to cool. ~ Dave Eggers

No scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses. A man asking why his days are short and full of suffering is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer. The answers that prominent scientific figures have offered are remarkable in their shallowness. ~ David Berlinski

She had no idea of her weight and no interest in learning it. She knew she could be thinner, and of course when she was younger she was indeed much thinner, but she was generally happy with her body as long as it wasn't giving her pain, and bored by all the different ways women droned on about the subject of weight, as if it were one of the great mysteries of life. The recent weight-losers, evangelical about whatever method had worked for them, the thin women who called themselves fat, the average women who called themselves obese, the ones desperate for her to join in their lavish self-loathing. "Oh, Frances, isn't it just so depressing when you see young, thin girls like that!" "Not especially," Frances would say, adding extra butter to her bread roll. ~ Liane Moriarty

The thought that something we cannot see, of unsurpassable skill and unimaginable form, exists in the back room's locked safe - isn't this, for any artist, for any person, an irresistible hope, beautiful and disturbing as the distant baying of Thoreau's lost hound that tells us, not least, that the mysteries of distance are endless? ~ Jane Hirshfield

Smiling now, Michael Dawn sat on his rooftop, gazing at the stars above him, just like men had done for thousands of years. Out there lay secrets and mysteries that an eternity could never unravel, worlds he could only imagine. Yet looking at them then, it all seemed so surreal. As if the only purpose the stars had in this world was to shine their tiny points of light down on him that evening. To give him something beautiful and breathtaking to admire. Maybe that was their only purpose. Maybe trying to get more out of them, trying to travel among them and shed light on things that were better left unexposed, had been the trouble all along. ~ John A. Ashley

God writes spiritual Mysteries on our heart, where they wait silently for discovery. ~ Rumi

A man could shoot a squirrel out of a tree from a distance of sixty feet. But he couldn't vomit into a bucket or pee into a pot only two feet away. It was one of the great mysteries of life. ~ Maggie Osborne

Take that absurd fool Elipas Levi who was supposed to be the Grand High Whatnot in Victorian times. Did you ever read his book, The Doctrine and Ritual of Magic? In his introduction he professes that he is going to tell you all about the game and that he's written a really practical book, by the aid of which anybody who likes can raise the devil, and perform all sorts of monkey tricks. He drools on for hundreds of pages about fiery swords and tetragrams and the terrible aqua poffana, but does he tell you anything? Not a blessed thing. Once it comes to a showdown he hedges like the crook he was and tells you that such mysteries are far too terrible and dangerous to be entrusted to the profane. Mysterious balderdash my friend. I'm going to have a good strong nightcap and go to bed. ~ Dennis Wheatley

Let the mind be enlarged ... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind ~ Francis Bacon

The insistence on the knowledge of intellectual mysteries, either as an indispensable addition to or as a substitute for simple obedience to the claims of the Christian life, has always been a weakness of the Church. ~ R.H. Charles

It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth. ~ John Irving

All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy. Whether you are an apprentice training to become a master electrician and unraveling the mysteries of high voltage; or a medical student, grinding away night and day, studying the secrets of the human body and using available technologies to help your patients; or a would-be stockbroker or a student of high finance; or a trainee in one of the psychoanalytic schools, you are in exactly the same position as the apprentice shaman or witch doctor in tribal societies. You are spending large amounts of time, energy, and money in order to be initiated into rarefied realms of secret power. You are undergoing an ordeal testing your capacities to become a master of this power. And, as is true in all initiations, there is no guarantee of success. [Magician energy] ~ Robert Moore

God hath his mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell,
He hides them deep, like the secret sleep
Of him he loved so well. ~ Cecil Frances Alexander

At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Opening a door to the mysteries, hoping to shed a little dark on all the stuff we think we know. ~ Brian Andreas

Mornings are mysteries; the first world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud
Shroud in their births. ~ Henry Vaughan

The letter K was the first one in the alphabet which had not, with more or less justification, been used to designate other vitamins, and it also happened to be the first letter in the word 'koagulation' according to the Scandinavian and German spelling. ~ Henrik Dam

Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited?

Norman Spinrad: I think it's a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov's, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn't. The supposed dichotomy between "literary fiction" and "popular fiction" is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn't want to be "popular," meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were "serious"?

I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. "Genre," if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. "Westerns" must be set in the Old West. "Mysteries" must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. "Nurse Novels" must have a nurse. And so forth.

In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are "genres." They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of "genre" in an absolute literary sense. ~ Norman Spinrad

Whatever else it may be, the Qur'an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths - none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra - we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named ~ Tom Holland

All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. ~ Karl Marx

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unkown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. ~ Luther Standing Bear

Motivation gets you started, and inspiration keeps you going. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

Part of my motivation for writing mysteries for young people is that I loved mysteries when I was growing up, and now that I'm on the creative end of things, I'm discovering that they're even more fun to write! ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Mysteries are not riddles. Mysteries are places to go with your mind. You go into mysteries. ~ Frederick Lenz

Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy. ~ Umberto Eco

We had long since established the habit of not speaking as we walked the two miles home; silent togetherness is what Scandinavian families do naturally, and it may be what they do best. ~ Hope Jahren

I swear to use my scientific knowledge for the good of Humanity. I promise never to harm any person in my search for enlightenment.

I shall be courageous and careful in my quest for greater knowledge about the mysteries that surround us. I shall not use scientific knowledge for my own personal gain or give it to those who seek to destroy the wonderful planet on which we live.

If I break this oath, may the beauty and wonder of the Universe forever remain hidden from me. ~ Stephen Hawking

One of the things that did intrigue me about when I read the pilot - because I had not read the books before doing the show - was the mystery aspect of it. I didn't feel that it was just a crime-based story. It really does have that mystery element, and it felt like a throwback to other shows in the past that had a bit more of that. There was something iconic about it. The fact that it's set in Boston gave it a feeling that was different to me. So, I am definitely more of a fan of mysteries than I am of a circular crime-based genre. ~ Sasha Alexander

He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: "Life is like that," but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles. ~ Michael Ende

I've just been wandering the streets at night. If I came by a German soldier out alone, I would follow him, shove the pistol to the back of his head, and shoot. Once, I even did two at the same time, but they were really drunk."


Poul-Erik aka 'Willy'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

She craved a tall glass of the fresh-squeezed lemonade from the pitcher she'd left chilling in the fridge. Two glasses served with a generous slice of pound cake with orange glaze icing sounded twice as nice. ~ Ed Lynskey

But the other half of my motivation came from farther back in my brain, in the curious part that I inherited. It came from the spot in my skull that feels the burning need to unravel puzzles, finish crosswords, indulge in Internet games, and read all the mystery books I can get my grubby little paws on. Like it or not, need it or not, and want it or not, I can't leave a good mystery alone. ~ Cherie Priest

The state of love is the state of grace. The development of that state and the unlocking of its mysteries brings one to the condition where there is no separation between oneself and others ~ Nilakanta Sri Ram

No purpose, no science, only love alone can justify and explain the mysteries of creation. ~ Debasish Mridha

And he now knew with certainty that the world was hollowed of its wonder by knowledge and travel, that when one stripped away the mysteries, its dimensions collapsed rather than bloomed. Of course, the world was a much more sophisticated place to him now than it had been when he was a child, but it was also far simpler. Everywhere
men grasped and grasped, as though the titles "king," "shriah," and "grandmaster" were simply masks worn by the same hungry animal. Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world's only dimension. ~ R. Scott Bakker

There is no secret to how to attain prosperity. The Universe supports and rewards us for taking risks on things that matter to the Universe. When we remember this, the mysteries about prosperity disappear, and prosperity stands explained. Prosperity will then manifest itself easily provided the Universe agrees that we are doing the right things in our lives to deserve this prosperity. ~ Ernie J Zelinski

To describe an emotion is to feel with words. To communicate a moment of existence is to bridge the eternal and the temporal with an intellectual engagement of body, soul, spirit, and mind. To write, therefore is to entangle the mysteries of the universe in a collection of words, a web of ideas, a single drop of ink on a page. ~ Charles M. Heyworth

In a well-ordered universe, there would be no mysteries. You'd just know things. There wouldn't be these big, hanging questions. ~ Morgan Matson

Yes I have done it all. Tested the shallow waters, swam through the dangerous tides, met strangers, seen friends turn strangers, taken risks to achieve my goals, persevered to out do myself each time, rose high, fell hard, learned to climb, learned to dream and in dreaming learned to relate to reality.
I have earned respect, achieved things very young, believed in my potential, questioned it too but through it all I have never stopped to aspire. I am a human and I must adapt to the changing seasons, learn new skills and master them all.
Now as I stand and look up, I see a heap of laurels yet to achieve and chest of mysteries yet to resolve. I am not one in the crowd. I'll forever be the one whom they could never be ~ Adhish Mazumder