Stig Dagerman - True Quotes

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Parents always live a less pure life than their children, because they condone everything they do. The ability to condone everything in oneself but practically nothing in one's children is the boon that "experience" bestows on humanity. What parents call experience is really nothing but attempts, successful to the point of sheer cynicism, to belie everything which they found pure, true and right when they were young. They themselves don't notice the awful cynicism behind this incessant talk of "experience" being the highest aim in life: they only notice "inexperience" in their children, that is, the form of inexperience called purity and integrity, and then they get annoyed.

Stig Dagerman
I am still fairly convinced that as a theory it's true enough: to live, really only means to put off one's suicide from day to day. You have probably had some experience of this too; even if you are not able to put it into words, you must have been subconsciously aware of it.

Stig Dagerman
It may be true that death is a large empty hole and that sorrow is knowing just how deep the hole is, but it is only true when one is sober. If one has snaps one can fill up the hole with all the beautiful thoughts one can think of, and all the fine words one can hit on. One can fill it right up to the brink, and then put a stone there. He loved her because she loved him, and if one is loved, one loves in return, otherwise one is a fool.

Stig Dagerman