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My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.

Jo Nesbo

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Jo Nesbo
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: March 29
Association Football Player
Author
Economist
Journalist
Musician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Singer
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Writing
Crime
Scandinavian
Influence
Scandinavians
Wasn
Scandinavia
Started
Europeans
Probably
Hardly
American
Writers
Read
Begin
Great
Reader

More quotes by Jo Nesbo

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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.
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It was a sudden inspiration. But inspiration never came without a reason.
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You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.
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You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.
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Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.
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I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.
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Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel.
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The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.
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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.
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For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.
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. We have this attitude that people become drug addicts against their will. That they couldn’t possibly want this kind of life. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe they don’t want to live like other people — it just wouldn’t suit them.
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When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street.
Jo Nesbo
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We're prisioners of... things.Of who we are.
Jo Nesbo
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As a writer, you have to believe you're one of the best writers in the world. To sit down every day at the typewriter filled with self-doubt is not a good idea.
Jo Nesbo
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Love is a greater mystery than death.
Jo Nesbo
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Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.
Jo Nesbo
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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 Nesbo
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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 Nesbo
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When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.
Jo Nesbo
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My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'
Jo Nesbo