Literary Birthday – 29 March – Jo Nesbø

Seven Jo Nesbø Quotes

1. For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. I’m really happy when I’m waiting for a plane and the message comes that it’s three hours late. Great, I’ll get to write!
2. Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.
3. Music for me is more like releasing tension, I don’t really have a method. Writing is about dreaming things up, using your imagination and instantly knowing whether you’re onto something. Writing music has taken the back seat to writing fiction now.
4. I like art that shows something. But most of what I see claims a beauty or a truth that isn’t there. It may have been in the artist’s mind, but the communicative talent is absent. If I don’t see beauty or truth, it isn’t there, simple as that. An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.
5. Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It’s the opposite; it’s a void, an absence of goodness.
6. It’s impossible to write anything without being political. You have to make political choices in description. You make choices about what to write and what not to write and those choices are bound to be political. But I see myself as an entertainer. I don’t start with a political agenda. I start with something human, whether evil, love, hate. I’m a vulture. I will use anything to drive the story forward.
7. I read. And I read. I basically put off writing as long as I could, that was until I was 37. Then I started writing like a madman.

Jo Nesbø is an Edgar Award nominated Norwegian author and musician. He is well-known for his crime novels featuring Inspector Harry Hole. Titles in the series include Nemesis and The Snowman. He is also the vocalist and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre.

Source for Image: Facebook Page Credit: Thron Ullberg

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar