Peter Høeg

If you want to support others you have to stay upright yourself.

There's no simple aritmetic for life's distribution of happiness and sorrow, no such thing as a standard share.

We sat there and I knew that this was how it felt to be totally accepted. You sit close to another person and are understood, everything is understood and nothing is judged and you are indispensable.

Under certain circumstances the fateful decisions in life, sometimes even in matters of life and death, are made with an almost indifferent ease. While the little things-for instance, the way people hang on to what is over-seem so important.

People under thirty haven't yet stopped believing that something wonderful can suddenly happen.

April light was unlike any other. It had a charming, optimistic unreliability like an overbid hand in poker. It gave a promise of spring that it wasn't sure it could keep.

Back then I could not understand one word of what I read.
Reading did, however, give me heart. Even if you cannot understand what you are reading you can get something from books.

In ten years they would be dead, deported or in leadership positions.