Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn't. Both had always existed. Neither coul… - Karl Ove Knausgård

When someone is going through a difficult time, the difficulties spread out in concentric circles and touch even peripheral situations and relationships. When darkness falls in one person, fire is lit in the other, and thereby all sense of normality vanishes, unless someone struggles to stay within it, without necessarily even realizing what one is doing. For on the one hand, everything is as usual, and it must remain as usual, on the other everything is an emergency. It is the friction between the two levels that starts the fire.

I would have given a fortune to know what the people sitting there were thinking. What the world looked like to them. Imagine if it was radically different from what I saw. If it was full of pleasure at the dark leather of the sofa, the black surface of the coffee and its bitter taste, not to mention the yellow eye of custard in the center of the puff pastry’s winding and cracked terrain. What if the whole of this world sang inside them? What if they were full to bursting with the many delights the day had bestowed on them?

He was the kind to cut through to the essence, and thus someone who made a difference.