Knut Hamsun Quotes
In old age... we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
Knut Hamsun (Wandereres, 1909)
Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us!
Knut Hamsun
There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.
Knut Hamsun
No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.
Knut Hamsun
And love became the world's origin and the world's ruler, yet littered its path is with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.
Knut Hamsun (Victoria, 1898)
When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.
Knut Hamsun
No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.
Knut Hamsun
Today riches and honours have been lavished on me, but one gift has been lacking, the most important one of all, the only one that matters, the gift of youth.
Knut Hamsun
The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too.
Knut Hamsun
I love three things," I then say. "I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth."
"And which do you love best?"
"The dream."
Knut Hamsun (Pan, 1894)
You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.
Knut Hamsun
In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.
Knut Hamsun
I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.
Knut Hamsun (Hunger, 1890)
