Carsten Jensen Quotes

Life had taught him about something far more complicated than justice. Its name was balance.

— Carsten Jensen

“Two drowning people can't save each other. All they can do is drag each other down.”

— Carsten Jensen

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”

— Carsten Jensen

“That's the strange thing about a good story. No pleasure if you can't share it.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Hope can be like a plant that sprouts and grows and keeps people alive. But it can also be a wound that refuses to heal.”

— Carsten Jensen

“You died in the end, but you fought first.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Is there anything more heartbreaking than drowning in sight of land? Is there a single one of us who hasn't at least once felt haunted by the fear of slipping away within sight of a safe haven?”

— Carsten Jensen

Many years ago there lived a man called Laurids Madsen who went up to heaven and came down again thanks to his boots.

— Carsten Jensen

“Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Everyone in our town has a story
but it's not the one he tells himself. Its author has a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, and five hundred pens that never stop scribbling.”

— Carsten Jensen

“That's how it is, he told himself. If you dread something enough, even your worst fears coming true brings comfort.”

— Carsten Jensen

The women's song was always the same, as monotonous as the beating of the waves against the beach: loss, loss. The conch offered them no enchantment. When they put their ear to it, all they heard was the echo of their mourning.

— Carsten Jensen

“Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied. With unexpected politeness he bowed, thanked her, and said, likewise.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.”

— Carsten Jensen

Even terror needs a yardstick, and surely the yardstick for the unknown is the known?

— Carsten Jensen

“When it came to choosing between education and religion, Albert said, he'd choose education every time. The school represented young people and the future - and the church didn't. If the school in Vestergade was bigger than the church, so much the better. Any town that believed in the future should take note.”

— Carsten Jensen

“There shall come a day when all the women in the world will lie in the gutter screaming for cock,' he intoned. 'But not an inch shall they be given!'
'Am I to understand,' Knud Erik asked, 'that nobody wanted to screw you?”

— Carsten Jensen

“That's how we're connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Freedom had a thousand faces. But so did crime. The thought of what a man might do made me dizzy.”

— Carsten Jensen

“No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything.”

— Carsten Jensen

“As he passed through the dining room, he stopped and took a white daisy from the bouqet his housekeeper had placed in the middle of the table..and put the daisy in the buttonhole of his summer jacket. Then he opened the front door and walked down the steps to Prinsegade, filled with the blind triumph that people sometimes experience when they've conquered their own better judgment.”

— Carsten Jensen

“We don't sail because the sea is there. We sail because there's a harbour. We don't start by heading for distant shores. We seek protection first.”

— Carsten Jensen

“With no other choices open to us, we'd turned our gaze seaward. The oceans were our America: they reached farther than any prairie, untamed as on the first day of creation. Nobody owned them.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Having a child isn't a deal you strike with life. As I said: a child is a gift. And what remains after a child is gone is the memory of the years it was allowed to live. Not its death”

— Carsten Jensen

Contrary to what most people think, weeping isn't an uncontrollable emotion that spills into tears. It's the opposite, a channel for feelings, a way to divert them in a healthy direction.

— Carsten Jensen

“But he didnt want to be thought of as a fool. To walk around the town fully dressed and yet appear naked to the world was a shame he couldn't bear.”

— Carsten Jensen

“From now on, consider yourself a con artist.”

— Carsten Jensen

“And what he contemplated was death. Some people complained when death came top early and claimed a child, a young mother, or a sailor with a family to provide for. He'd never understood that. Of course, it was a tragedy for those left behind and for the person who'd been robbed of the greater part of life. But it wasn't unfair. Death was beyond such notions. It seemed to him that the bereaved often forgot their grief at a death in favor of railing fruitlessly against life's injustices. After all, no one would dream of saying that the wind was unfair to the trees and the flowers. True, you might feel uneasy when the sun switched off its light, or ice gave your ship a dangerous list. But indignant, outraged, or angry, no. It was pointless. Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”

— Carsten Jensen

“The miller's hefty wife, Madam Weber, already armed with a pitchfork, insisted on joining the fight, and because she appeared more intimidating than most of us men, we instantly welcomed her to our bloodthirsty ranks.”

— Carsten Jensen

“Look at the swell. You'll not find a bigger swell anywhere. It has half the globe for its run-up. You're young. You have the whole world. Don't bother yourself with the past.”

— Carsten Jensen