I stopped for a few seconds by the newspaper stand wondering whether to buy the two evening papers here, the two biggest publications. Reading them w… - Karl Ove Knausgård

The general perception of writers’ lives is that they are exciting and desirable. But you generally spend most of your time cooking and cleaning.

I can’t speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself, I think that’s the deepest motivation, and it is so because I’m full of self-loathing and shame. Writing doesn’t make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead.

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.