Carsten Jensen

“You died in the end, but you fought first.”

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”

“That's how we're connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.”

“... The women's song was always the same, as monotonous as the beating of the waves against the beach: loss, loss. The conch offered them no enchantment. When they put their ear to it, all they heard was the echo of their mourning.”

“That's how it is, he told himself. If you dread something enough, even your worst fears coming true brings comfort.”

“From now on, consider yourself a con artist.”

“As he passed through the dining room, he stopped and took a white daisy from the bouqet his housekeeper had placed in the middle of the table..and put the daisy in the buttonhole of his summer jacket. Then he opened the front door and walked down the steps to Prinsegade, filled with the blind triumph that people sometimes experience when they've conquered their own better judgment.”

“But he didnt want to be thought of as a fool. To walk around the town fully dressed and yet appear naked to the world was a shame he couldn't bear.”

“No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything.”

“Life had taught him about something far more complicated than justice. Its name was balance.”

“When it came to choosing between education and religion, Albert said, he'd choose education every time. The school represented young people and the future - and the church didn't. If the school in Vestergade was bigger than the church, so much the better. Any town that believed in the future should take note.”

“Even terror needs a yardstick, and surely the yardstick for the unknown is the known?”

“Freedom had a thousand faces. But so did crime. The thought of what a man might do made me dizzy.”

“...the miller's hefty wife, Madam Weber, already armed with a pitchfork, insisted on joining the fight, and because she appeared more intimidating than most of us men, we instantly welcomed her to our bloodthirsty ranks.”

“There shall come a day when all the women in the world will lie in the gutter screaming for cock,' he intoned. 'But not an inch shall they be given!''Am I to understand,' Knud Erik asked, 'that nobody wanted to screw you?”