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Quote by Karl Ove Knausgaard

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Karl Ove Knausgaard

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“I am alive, I have my own children and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn’t be afraid of their father. They aren’t. I know that. When I enter a room, they don’t cringe, they don't look down at the floor, they don’t dart off as soon as they glimpse an opportunity, no, if they look at me, it is not a look of indifference, and if there is anyone I am happy to be ignored by it is them. If there is anyone I am happy to be taken for granted by, it is them. And should they have completely forgotten I was there when they turn forty themselves, I will thank them and take a bow and accept the bouquets.”

“Was it Jesus you saw a picture of?” he says and looks up at me. If it had not been for the friendly voice and the long pause before the question, I would have thought he was making fun of me. He finds it a little embarrassing that I am a Christian; all he wants is for me not to be different from the other kids, and of all the kids in the neighbourhood, his youngest son is the only one to call himself a Christian. But he is really wondering about this. I feel a flutter of joy because he actually cares, and at the same time I become a bit offended that he underestimates me like that. I shake my head. “It wasn’t Jesus,” I say.”

“But the moment I was alone others meant nothing to me. It wasn't that I disliked them, or nurtured feelings of loathing for them; on the contrary, I liked most of them, and the ones I didn't actually like I could always see some worth in, some attribute I could identify with, or at least find interesting, something which could occupy my mind for the moment. But liking them was not the same as caring about them. It was the social situation that bound me, the people within it did not.”

“But I know that I’ve always had a connection to plants, an ability to care for them in a way that makes them thrive quickly, vibrantly, fragrantly. And among the flowers that I grow… I’m able to sense when there is a fragrance that will return a person to a forgotten moment in time, a long-buried memory. Scents have always been heightened for me… the scents of the flowers that I grow most of all.”