Jo Nesbo Quotes

I am sure there is a right way and a wrong way and in today's life, there are many different rules of being politically correct.

To some extent, people who are insane are nonconformists, and society and their family wish they would live what appear to be useful lives.

Solemnity is proper in church, but things that are proper in church are not necessarily proper outside, and vice versa. For example, I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.

The whole system of society tells you what to do.

There is a difference in what people are willing to consider, daytime versus nighttime.

I realized that if I were a 23-year-old girl getting married, and I wasn't struggling with it, that would likely mean that something was either massively wrong with me or that my brain is made up of delicately wrapped almonds that serve perfectly as party favors.

Too often athletes think there's these norms that I have to fit into and there are people that I have to please.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

We could say politically correct that look doesn't matter, but the look obviously matters.

Scaling down individually is very hard. Imagine that if you go to a place where everybody is dressed nicely, and you are the only one who doesn't dress nicely. Everybody goes on vacations to a great place and you go to the Jersey shore. It's very hard to do these things without an organized mechanism, but it looks to me like there might be some organized mechanisms.

If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me.

Jon shrugged. 'Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister.

We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.

We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.

[American] conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself.

Oh, Herbert," she said pleadingly to her silent husband, "you must make him marry her! Call for the parson immediately! Look at them... they are...," she sputtered, "canoodling!

I always look at myself knowing that I will have a certain degree of cognitive distortion.

Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.

The strains and stresses suffered by the individual in society are grounded in the normal functioning of that society (and of the individual!) rather than in its disturbances and diseases.

The more bosom a woman displayed, the less she wanted you to look. Openly, at least.

think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be with Wonder Woman.

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.

Imagine, [Kriezler] said, that you enter a large, somewhat crumbling hall that echoes with the sounds of people mumbling and talking repetitively to themselves. All around you these people fall into prostrate positions, some of them weeping. Where are you? Sara’s answer was immediate: in an asylum. Perhaps, Kreizler answered, but you could also be in a church. In the one place the behavior would be considered mad; in the other, not only sane, but as respectable as any human activity can be.