Stig Dagerman

"Once they knew each other it was more difficult, because it is difficult to love those we know well. To be in love is to be curious. A thing is only beautiful if we do not have surfeit of it, perhaps …"

"It made her pure, and those we love must be pure, otherwise we can't love them. But loving a person is also making her pure."

"The only current happiness is indifference, the only current feelings are the very small ones, the only current thoughts are smaller still. The only beautiful things are small feelings. Commons sense …"

"When you're called up you don't need many personal belongings — not when you love either."

"One way of poisoning love is to mingle it with hate. It is the best way but in some ways the most dangerous. Love and hate are the cat and mouse of our emotions, sometimes the cat chases the mouse, of…"

"For anyone who feels our of place in the land of small dogs the only thing left is to become a big dog, and the only advantage in being a big dog is that one is not then ashamed of dying. Not even a b…"

"I come to understand what purity is: it means to feel something so wholeheartedly that it shrivels up all doubts, all cowardice and all considerations within one."

"To increase his suffering he now accused her, asserting that she didn't love him, and that is always a dangerous thing to say: If one wants somebody to love one, one should not ask her to consider whe…"