Quotes by Swedish Authors - Page 11

If you see the world and yourself through a lens smudged by negativity then you’ll find much misery. If you look outwards and inwards through lens brightened by positivity you’ll find much to be happy and appreciative about.
Henrik Edberg
When we stop judging others and ourselves, our heart begins to open.
Swami Dhyan Giten
As both the Mercury and Apollo programs have shown our science and technology are so powerful that if an intense effort is made we can do almost anything we want in say ten years - provided we are not in conflict with the laws of nature.
Hannes Alfvin
Choice is the essence of what I believe it is to be human.
Liv Ullmann
History is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.
Stieg Larsson
Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child's take on morals and ethics.
Stieg Larsson
I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness.
Sven Lindqvist
I don't feel at home where I am,or where I spend time; only where,beyond counting, there's freedom and calm,that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,to pebbles and sand . . . where life's mean-ing lies buried, that never let onecome within cannon shot yet.From cloud-covered wells untoldpour color and light, a feteof cupids and Ledas in gold.That is, silk and honey and sheen.That is, boon and quiver and call.That is, all that lives to be free,needing no words at all.
Regina Derieva
You understand Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.
Astrid Lindgren
When YOU choose to change, your reality must change accordingly. It simply has no other choice.
Gordana Biernat
There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.
Greta Garbo
Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they’ve sold out, and the more you’re acclaimed, the punier they themselves appear. When it’s like that, the only way they can fight back is by dragging you down. The bullshit gives them back a little bit of dignity – at least that’s what they imagine.
David Lagercrantz
Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.
Dag Hammarskjöld
If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens.One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness.Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love.It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean.
Swami Dhyan Giten
Don't go against your inner knowing. Just don't. Trust yourself.
Maria Erving
And now she stood outside the station with his flowers pressed happily to her breast, in all that red cardigan of hers, making the rest of the world look as if it was made in greyscale.
Fredrik Backman
The sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desktick tick tickme not making a soundand some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine.
Charlotte Eriksson
Inspiration is everywhere.
Charlotte Eriksson
I know there are days when even one single positive thought feels like too much effort, but you must develop an unconditional love for life. You must never lose your childish curiosity for the possibilities in every single day. Who you can be, what you can see, what you can feel and where it can lead you. Be in love with your life, everything about it. The sadness and the joys, the struggles and the lessons, your flaws and strengths, what you lose and what you gain.
Charlotte Eriksson
When we have developed a trust in both our inner man and woman and they can nourish, support, communicate and cooperate with each other, a love begins to flow between them.
Swami Dhyan Giten
Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.
Fredrik Backman
It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.
Henning Mankell
You have to believe that your voice can mean something. You have to believe that what you do matters. And you have to keep going even on days you can't find that belief. If you can't do it for yourself, you do it for all the other young souls who need to be shown that things are possible. That they too can do that thing they dream of. You do it despite the doubts and the struggles. You do it because it's what you came here to do.That's what makes an artist.
Charlotte Eriksson
Ove gives the box a skeptical glance, as if it's a highly dubious sort of box, a box that rides a scooter and wears tracksuit pants and just called Ove "my friend" before offering to sell him a watch.
Fredrik Backman
Or that time she made a snowman in Britt-Marie and Kent’s garden right under their balcony and dressed it up in grown-up clothes so it looked as if a person had fallen from the roof.
Fredrik Backman
... so this is for us.This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and loveand this is for doing it even if no one will ever knowbecause the beauty is in the act of doing it.Not what it can lead to.This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playingand no one is around and they will never knowbut I will forever rememberand that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have,and this is for you who write or play or read or singby yourself with the light off and door closedwhen the world is asleep and the stars are alignedand maybe no one will ever hear itor read your wordsor know your thoughtsbut it doesn’t make it less glorious.It makes it ethereal. Mysterious.Infinite.For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe inand only you can decide how much it meantand meansand will forever meanand other people will experience it toothrough you.Through your spirit. Through the way you talk.Through the way you walk and love and laugh and careand I never meant to write this longbut what I want to say is:Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourselfand let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.Let your very identity be your book.Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.So go create. Take photographs in the wood, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountainwhere no one will ever hearand your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar.Make your life be your artand you will never be forgotten.
Charlotte Eriksson
I am living a simple life with a complicated mind and I have yet to find a state of mind where I feel safe with who I am, where I am, with what I do.
Charlotte Eriksson
Just feel forgiveness in your heart. The universe will hear you and that will be enough.
Maria Erving
This is the story of how I "came down with cat," even though I had decided I would never, ever, own any pet.
Nils Uddenberg
My home drove meinto the wilderness.Few look for me. Few hear me.
Dag Hammarskjöld
This is the story of a girl gone mad while trying to find a little bit of love.
Charlotte Eriksson
In the beginning the queen had been a courageous and fair-minded princess very much liked by all, but unfortunately she grew up and became a frightened adult, as adults tend to be. She started loving efficiency and avoiding conflict. As adults do.
Fredrik Backman
Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.
Dag Hammarskjöld
The ego is the self that is unaware of itself so unless you seek first who you are not, the ego will use every technique, practice and experience for its own ‘spiritual growth’.The more ‘spiritual’ it becomes, the more into delusion it takes you.
Maria Erving
No human being, particularly a young, attractive woman, is so alone that there is no one to miss her when she disappears.
Maj Sjöwall
You can quiz me on Petrarch, Medea, Shakespeare or Dante, I know them all, and I’m sorry, but they’ve all gone wrong. Dumb glorified men, writing words about love and life as if they knew. As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t make it out alive either, so I’m sure as hell not going to go to them for advice.
Charlotte Eriksson
Life's only law is change. Everything is continuously changing, evolving and developing. Hindus say that it takes 840 million lives to become a human being, which emphasises the precious gift of being a human being.
Swami Dhyan Giten
In love, you can sometimes feel a melting and merging with the other person, and the two becomes one. The physical bodies are still separate, but something beyond the bodies creates a oneness. It opens a spiritual dimension.
Swami Dhyan Giten
...I still saw everything through the filter I had created in order to survive. I could not see the happiness that preceded the abyss. I had forced myself not to acknowledge my life's most splendid moment, in order to be able to live out the rest of my life without it. I think that was what had happened. It has changed since, but back then it was impossible for me to embrace the happiness I had lost.
Linda Olsson
Presence is about how every action can arise from the quality, which we call awareness – the presence of our inner being, the presence of our soul. It is a large difference between working with people from the inner being and working with people from duty or a specific technique. Through working from the inner being, we can touch the soul of the other person, while we can only touch the personality of the other person, his surface and periphery, if we just work from a technique.
Swami Dhyan Giten
For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up.I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.
Marcus Samuelsson
Science is not an intelligence test. Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem.
Torsten Wiesel
I was never afraid of the dark and I spent my youth walking through empty playgrounds at midnight, worried mothers telling girls to be careful and ”the world is an ugly place and not everyone wants you well”. But I was not afraid and I wished for adrenaline to make my veins pulsate in that way that puts them more on the outside of my skin than inside.After the first night with you I never walked alone at night again because suddenly I had something to lose. Something to save.
Charlotte Eriksson
When all else fails, use the pen.EMW
Erik Martin Willén
The Norweigian philosopher Tonnesen said that to think about anything but death is evasion. Society, art, culture, the whole of civilisation is nothing but evasion, one great collective self delusion, the intention of which is to make us forget that all the time we are falling through the air, at every moment getting closer to death.
Sven Lindqvist
Ove çould not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn't possible to open one's mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts. It was the sort of argument that had just run, and run, and run. Until one day it just ran out.
Fredrik Backman
RELATIONSHIPS & THE INNER BEING The other is a mirror of our own face; the other is a mirror of our inner being. The entire universe is a manifestation of our own inner being. Man is the microcosm and the universe is the macrocosm. In our inner being, we are one with all.True relationships is to see ourselves in all beings and to see all beings in ourselves. The inner being is not only present in human beings, but it is also present in flowers, trees, animals, stones and the stars. The divine exists everywhere in nature. Once we realize this we will never feel alone. We find the communion of the heart everywhere.
Swami Dhyan Giten
To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.
Swami Dhyan Giten
You cannot ‘fit yourself in’ to greatness. This can only be done by embracing and pursuing your biggest dreams and desires.
Gordana Biernat
The final magnificent spark of a firework is only the last seconds of the fall. Though it’s invisible to most, it’s the way up that creates all the impact. 
Charlotte Eriksson
The book was an instrument of both repression and liberation
Anders Rydell
To teach her that not all monsters are in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside.
Fredrik Backman
Great growth comes from loneliness. You have time to develop, dwell in your own mind and go a bit mad. All great people are a bit mad. That’s good to remember. Don’t escape it. Great growth comes from time spent in foreign lands, watching foreign people with foreign cultures. It makes you forget about your own land and race and town for a while. Great growth also comes from rooting yourself into one place from time to time. Unpack your bags, get a nice bed, a book shelf, some friends. Learn to show up, keep in touch, stick around. Growth comes in all sort of forms and shapes, everywhere at all times, and it’s yours to take and consume. Do what ought to be done. Here and now, to get you somewhere — anywhere.
Charlotte Eriksson
I remember sitting and meditating beside a slow flowing river in India, and I got the feeling that this river could teach me all the secrets of the mystery of life. If we learn to surrender to a stone, a flower, to a man, to a woman, or a river, it becomes a door to the Whole.
Swami Dhyan Giten
I am constantly reminded that we human beings are basically storytellers. More homo narrans than Homo sapiens. We see ourselves in others' stories. Every genuine work of art contains a small fragment of glass from a mirror.
Henning Mankell
Outer relationships with a man or a woman are a mirror of the relationship between our own inner man and woman. Embracing our own inner man and woman means to understand the inner drama that happens between our male and female aspects, which manifests on the outside as relationships.
Swami Dhyan Giten
Kalle Fucking Blomkvist
Stieg Larsson
When you have done your part it's time to release your work into the universe and let it do its part.
Maria Erving
It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down. I promise I can fly before I hit the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. I swear, it doesn't hurt.
Charlotte Eriksson
One day a year let’s all pretendthat death is tucked up, fast asleep.That no lives meet a tragic end,no dreams are shattered on the cheap.The world’s at peace, there are no wars,we hug our friend, our former foe.No beggars die outside locked doors,all cells are empty on death row.Nobody’s stabbed, nobody’s shot,no car runs over someone’s friend.This can’t be true! – Well, maybe not.All I’m saying is: let’s pretend.
Stig Dagerman