Carsten Jensen Quotes

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

  Carsten Jensen

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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• “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

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• “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

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• “We were familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.”

  Carsten Jensen

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• “But that's how it is on a sailing ship, and in this respect its journey parallels that of life: simply knowing where you want to go isn't enough, because life is a windblown voyage, consisting mainly of the detours imposed by alternating calm and storm.”

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• “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

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• “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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers.”

  Carsten Jensen

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• “Our mother sticks a knife in our heart when we say goodbye on the wharf. And we stick a knife in hers when we go. And that's how we're connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.”

  Carsten Jensen

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

  Carsten Jensen

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• “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

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• “Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”

  Carsten Jensen

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