Bokelskere.no

Hun kunne løfte en hel hest hvis hun ville. Og det ville hun.

Tenk at det fins et kjønn stappet ned i hver eneste kropp.

Forsett: Bare lese litteratur som kurerer behovet for litteratur.

En bok er et forsøk på å bli et bedre menneske - eller den er ingenting.

Det er tvilerens forbannelse at alt må fortøyes til ord først for å være virkelig, og ordene skal helst knyttes til andre ord, som helst bør gå opp i hverandre, nærmest som et regnestykke, og først når man har en god og sammenhengende beskrivelse av tingene i verden, er man klar til å handle i den.

I det siste har jeg for øvrig vært et morgenmenneske uansett. Det veksler fra uke til uke hva slags menneske jeg er.

Jeg har bare én bok i meg, når alt kommer til alt. Den heter: «Hvordan jeg lærte å elske», og jeg håper å få skrive den igjen og igjen, med små variasjoner, til jeg dør.

'You must be baptised!’ That word was lost on the Danish interpreter, and on the king’s, and finally Ubba looked to me for help. ‘You have to stand in a barrel of water,’ I said, remembering how Beocca had baptised me after my brother’s death, ‘and they pour more water over you.’ ‘They want to wash me?’ Ubba asked, astonished. I shrugged. ‘That’s what they do, lord.’

"The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the heroes who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I was to discover that war was really about food. About feeding men and horses. About finding food. The army that eats wins."

"Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods."

"Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal."

‘It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.’

"Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is."

"From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees."

What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

Human beings, born ultimately of the stars and now for a while inhabiting a world called Earth, have begun their long voyage home