TIME WENT ON AS THE CLOCK DOES

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."
- Lady Chatterley's lover, D.H. Lawrence

AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS WHAT THEY CALL CLOSURE

"Det finns dom som gjort dig illa,

det finns dom som inget vet,

det finns dom som gjort en grej av

att skrika ut din hemlighet.

Det finns dom som stal din stolthet.

Det finns dom som stal ditt mod.

Och dom som ingenting förstod.

Dig som ingen känner,

dig som ingen ser.

Du som saknar vänner

och knappt vill andas mer.

Hör på mig min kära,

hur ska jag få dig att förstå:

Du måste resa dig och gå!

Men det finns nåd för nya världar

mycket större än den här,

nya skapelser och tider,

nåd för allt som blir och är.

Och alla deras lögner betyder ingenting.

Tro mig när jag säger:

Skammen var aldrig din."

- Jonas Gardell

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for my name is Richard. I was born in 1974."

- The beach, Alex Garland

This is still one of the best openings of a book I have ever read.

"On a different note, the author feels obligated to acknowledge that yes, the success of a memoir - of any book, really - has a lot to do with how appealing its narrator is. To adress this, the author offers the following:

a) That he is like you.
b) That, like you, he falls asleep shortly after he becomes drunk.
c) That he sometimes has sex without condoms.
d) That he sometimes falls asleep when he is drunk having sex without condoms.
e) That he never gave his parents a proper burial.
f) That he never finished college.
g) That he expects to die young.
h) That, because his father smoked and drank and died as a result, he is afraid of food.
i) That he smiles when he sees young black men holding babies.
One word: appealing.

- A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Dave Eggers

Lately I have bought or been given these books:
Dorothy Whipple - Someone at a distance
Don DeLillo - White noise
Ulf Lundell - Jack
Douglas Coupland - The gum thief
Jonas Gardell - Ett ufo gör entré
Jonas Gardell - Jenny
The romance of London, a collection of strange stories, scenes, adventures and vicissitudes
Tobias Wolff - Old school
Jack Kerouac - Windblown world: The journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
Claude Houghton - I am Jonathan Scrivener
Chuck Palahniuk - Rant
Junot Díaz - The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
Iris Murdoch - A fairly honoruable defeat
J.M. Coetzee - Diary of a bad year
Jonas Hassen Khemiri - Invasion!

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

"and he said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end he could remember only the string."

- Everything is illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

"Jag har inget alls emot dom, inte det minsta, inte över huvud taget skulle det någonsin för minsta lilla sekund ens falla mig in att närma mig ens ett relativt ogillande."

- Invasion!, Jonas Hassen Khemiri