Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.
I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell.
I am happy because I am no longer an author.
I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?
I do think readers should respect my privacy, but I don't get angry when I get personal questions, because I understand why.
When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.
When I started out on 'Min Kamp', I was so extremely frustrated over my life and my writing. I wanted to write something majestic and grand, something like 'Hamlet' or 'Moby Dick,' but found myself with this small life - looking after kids, changing diapers, quarreling with my wife, unable to write anything, really.
When you use the form of a novel, and you say 'I,' you are also saying 'I' for someone else. When you say 'you,' you are simultaneously in your room writing and in the outside world - you are seeing and being seen seeing, and this creates something slightly strange and foreign in the self.
In 'Min Kamp,' I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read.
In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out.
When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.
I spent six years after my first novel and five years after my second without getting into a new book.
On the floor by my bed, there are heaps of books I want to read, books I have to read, and books I believe I need to read.
I have some friends, most of them are writers or editors, whose recommendations I trust blindly. There are some critics, too, whom I trust, but not many.
Knut Hamsun's writing is magical. His sentences are glowing; he could write about anything and make it alive. Of contemporary writers, Thure Erik Lund is my definite favorite.
I have never been interested in presenting myself.
The notion of what is public and what is private has been dissolved. My children see documentaries; they see Instagram. Everyone is very open: it has become less taboo to expose lives.
Tarjei Vesaas has written the best Norwegian novel ever, 'The Birds' - it is absolutely wonderful: the prose is so simple and so subtle, and the story is so moving that it would have been counted amongst the great classics from the last century if it had been written in one of the major languages.
'My Struggle' came from a place of questioning and feelings of inauthenticity and frustration, and almost all of that is gone.
When I wrote my fictional novels, they always had a starting point of something real. Those images that are not real are exactly the same strength and power of the real ones, and the line between them is completely blurred.
