Literary Birthday – 21 February – Håkan Nesser

Happy Birthday, Håkan Nesser, born 21 February 1950.

Nine Quotes

1. You will find out who you are when the difficult moment comes.
2. Life imposes certain conditions upon us. If we don’t accept the challenge, we become petrified. We don’t have any real choice.
3. There’s no such thing as coincidence. Only a lack of knowledge.
4. A crime is born in the gap between the morality of society and that of the individual.
5. Words and form! We have a totally clear view of the world when we’re fourteen years old, maybe sooner. But then we need another fifty years in order to create a language that can express those impressions. And in the mean time, of course, they’ve faded away.
6. Writing is a very complicated process and you have to weigh and choose every word, there is not a simple solution for writing a novel.
7. The worst possible outcome is to die without having lived.
8. The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.
9. Everybody must have a story. For those who don’t, we need to invent one.

Håkan Nesser is a Swedish author. He has won Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times. He is the author of the Inspector Van Veeteren series (beginning with Mind’s Eye) and the Inspector Barbarotti series.

by Amanda Patterson

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