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Knut Hamsun Biography

Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a major Norwegian writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, and some essays.

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Knut Hamsun Quotes

I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.

Light, Overhanging, Rock, Rocks, Stood, Things

Great men are excellent topics of conversation, but the superior man, the superior men, the masters, the universal spirits on horseback, have to stop and search their memories merely to know who these so-called great men might be. And so the great man is left with the crowd, the worthless majority. . . for his admirers.

Memories, Men, Merely, Spirits, Topics

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Boil, Coffee, Doe, Fill, Thinking, Walk

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me. . . everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

Air, Heights, Shroud, Song, Spirit, Voice

I love three things," I then say. "I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth. " "And which do you love best?" "The dream.

Dream, Earth, Love You, Things, Three

A word can be transformed into a coulour, light, a smell; it is the writer's task to use it in such a way that it serves, never fails, can never be ignored.

Ignored, Light, Smell, Task, Tasks, Transformed

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

Generation, Generations, Lasts, Lyrics, Poetry, Sweden

I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.

Eternal, Let, Life And Death, Rhyme, Umbrella

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.

Becoming, Fate, Man, Men, Prudence

And love was creation's source,creation's ruler; but all love's ways are strewn with blossoms and blood, blossoms and blood.

And Love, Blood, Love, Strewn, Way

In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you

House, Men, Solitude, State, Understanding

Love is every bit as violent and dangerous as murder.

Love, Love Is, Murder, Violent

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there.

Confront, Fall, Knowledge, Men, Pattern, Space

One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word.

Direct, Know, Knows, Recognize, Secret, Word

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

Flower, Illustrious, Light, Offering, Poetry, Shower

But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.

Creation, Drove, Heart, Nostrils, Spices, Spring

I have gone to the forest.

Forest, Forests, Gone

I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.

Desire, Everything, Eye, Pain, State, Taken

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet. . . . If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)

Fool, Geographer, Giving, Ordinary, Poet

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.

Blood, Bone, Bones, Marrow, Pleading

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