Jo Nesbø Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

Christian ethics demand that you should not take revenge. The paradox is, naturally, that Christians worship a God who is the greatest avenger of them all. Defy him and you burn in eternal hell, an act of revenge which is completely out of proportion to the crime

Jo Nesbø
We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.

Jo Nesbø
Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.

Jo Nesbø
I've read that it's the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it.

Jo Nesbø
Everyone has a need to do penance. It's a basic need, like washing. It's about harmony, an absolutely essential inner balance. It's the balance we call morality.

Jo Nesbø
What we humans think we know is nothing compared to what we need to believe to numb the fear and pain.

Jo Nesbø
Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can't see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.

Jo Nesbø
Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament.

Jo Nesbø
Sick is a relative concept. We're all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behavior? No actions are in themselves symptoms of sickness. You have to look at the context within which these actions are performed.

Jo Nesbø
Do what boxers do, sway with the punches. Don't resist. If any of what happens at work gets to you, just let it. You won't be able to shut it out in the long term anyway. Take it bit by bit, release it like a dam, don't let it collect until the wall develops cracks.

Jo Nesbø
Revenge is the thinking man's reflex, a complex blend of action and consistency no other animal species has so far succeeded in evolving. Evolutionary speaking, the practice of taking revenge has shown itself to the so effective that only the most vengeful of us have survived.

Jo Nesbø
He went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard.

Jo Nesbø
Harry looked at Bellman. He could not help but admire him. The way you admire a cockroach you flush down the toilet and it comes creeping back again and again and in the end it inherits the world.

Jo Nesbø
Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.

Jo Nesbø
A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do.

Jo Nesbø
What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.

Jo Nesbø
Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.

Jo Nesbø
There's only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire.

Jo Nesbø
Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the "real" women's body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible mold.

Jo Nesbø
A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others.

Jo Nesbø
To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

Jo Nesbø
When I propose a candidate for a job I don't do it because the person in question is the best but because he is the one the client will employ. I provide them with a head that is good enough, placed on a body they want. [...] The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.

Jo Nesbø
It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason.

Jo Nesbø
Just imagine walking away from something you've started. Something you really believed would be good. I don't think I could ever do that.

Jo Nesbø