Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone’s noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it’s pitch-black. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive.

I’m physically nauseated by commonplace humanity, which is the only kind there is. And sometimes I willfully aggravate the nausea, like someone who induces vomiting to be relieved of the urge to vomit.

Depression is living in a body that fights to survive with a mind that tries to die.

So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.

You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.

I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was.