"We store up all sorts of stories with fabricated logic, so that life can look as though it has some meaning."
"Perhaps it was somewhere they wouldn’t find me."
"Isn’t that just the sort of thing people say about inhospitable places?"
"Life can look as though it has some meaning."
"The hard-packed gravel road I stood on led to a cluster of low buildings."
"I looked round. In the three other points of the compass low mountain ridges sloped down towards me."
"The only thing that stuck out was the church tower."
"The Finnmark plateau is beautiful. Fucked if I know."
"When predators can’t get enough mice and lemmings, they take grouse eggs."
"You have an allotted time, you burn down to the filter, and then it’s over, for good."
"A bit short, but that’s probably what makes it funny. Bang – it’s all over."
"I lay there staring at the ceiling. When I couldn’t sleep after the funeral, I started taking Valium."
"You just have to knock on a door and they’ll give you a bed."
"There weren’t many of us in the house, and then Grandma got pregnant."
"You should never let friends, family or employees owe you money, Jon. Never."
"People have got so soft. It’s become possible to be soft yet still survive. It’s perverse."
"I didn’t want the job. I didn’t want the money. But I needed it."
"And you get used to most things, even the smell of fish."
"You slipped an envelope containing money inside the magazine and went to the toilet, and when you came back the envelope contained speed instead of cash."
"Fisherman," he said without looking up. But I saw him start as he heard himself say the word.
"The pale little face on the pillow bearing the washed-out logo of Ullevål Hospital was enough."
"I had no principles. No money. But neither did I have blood on my hands. Not yet."
"A wolf? I thought they howled at the moon, in winter, not at the fucking sun that just hung there in the burned-out, colourless sky."
"If I could be half as good a man as my grandfather . . ."
"We stand here today with this empty coffin . . ."
"I tried to entice the buck to come closer with a crust of bread."
"I think it's time for me to go home and have a good cry."
"Everyone should be allowed to change their name every so often."
"I had a job that involved chasing drug-related debts and killing people."
"I couldn’t handle looking after them. I’m – as you must have realised by now – not the sort of man you can rely on."
"The sea – or ocean, as they called it – was shiny as a mirror. It looked solid enough for us to walk towards the red cauldron of the sun sticking above the horizon off to the north."
"That must be strange. Not having anyone. No one thinking of you. No one looking after you. Or no one to look after."
"No one knows. Not me, not you, not the priest, not the atheist. So we believe."
"Life is mostly about trying things you can't do. You end up losing more often than you win."
"Reason lives in the head, and faith in the heart. They're not always good neighbours."
"You don't say no to something that's free, you know."
"Hell, why not? They weren’t going to get me. I was going to get me."
"And that was how it was going to be from now on. Whatever was behind me could remain exactly that."
"It was like getting stabbed with two knives at the same time, one hot, one cold, one happiness, one fear of dying."
"I didn’t believe, expect or hope anything. I just wanted to... ask if she possibly felt like spending the rest of her life with me."
"The darkness came. I fell. The hole sucked me in, down, and not even all the drink in the world would stop it."
"The brain is a strange and remarkable thing."
"If heaven didn't actually exist, then at least we have a good, secure life as Christians, where we work, live happily, accept the possibilities God and nature give us, and look after each other."
"I’ve read that bodies don’t burn well. We’re sixty per cent water, maybe that’s why."
"Sometimes it costs more than it should to live according to Scripture."
"That’s why it’s called faith, not knowledge."
"Even Knut would have been happy with this blaze."
"The only thing I’ve regretted these past few days is that I let you go."
"I don’t regret it. Not now, and I won’t regret it later either."